Talk about the unknown upheaval of Android 11 just released.

Google recently officially released Android 11. For this latest generation of Android system, the new functions and features brought by it are naturally valuable. However, considering that the native Android functions are often magic change in China, the impact on domestic users is limited. The biggest impact of Android 11 on the domestic ecology may still be some underlying changes, which are rarely mentioned.

Android 11 is coming.

Yes, the bottom of Android 11 has changed a lot! The drastic changes brought about will profoundly affect the vast number of users. Let’s talk about it today.

Brush machine no longer turns brick? Recovery partition is history!

If you are an Android brush player, you must know the term Recovery. This is the mode used to restore the system in the Android system. Whether it is the official upgrade system of the manufacturer or the player swiping the third-party ROM, it usually needs to be done through Recovery. In the Android machine, there is also a special partition to place Recovery, but this will become history in Android 11.

Recovery, which is familiar to brush players.

In the traditional Recovery upgrade mode, if the data written into the System partition is wrong, the machine may not start. Brush players should be familiar with this kind of "brick-changing" situation, and even the manufacturer OTA will occasionally "brick-changing". How to avoid it? In fact, in recent years, the new Android machine uses the A/B partition mechanism, and many Android machines no longer need Recovery to guide the upgrade.

To change the startup mode of Android system, it is necessary to boot directly through Boot after Recovery and A/B partition mechanism.

In the Android machine with A/B partition mechanism, when the system needs to be upgraded, the new system will be written into one of the partitions, and it will be started from that partition after successful writing. If the writing fails or the startup fails, it will be started from the original partition, which is equivalent to the mutual backup of two system partitions, greatly reducing the failure rate of system upgrade.

The mechanism of Android 11 is similar. The machine with Android 11 pre-installed in the factory cancels the Recovery partition and changes the A/B partition mechanism to some extent. When Android 11 needs to upgrade the system, it will compare the data of the new system with the current system data, and write the difference into another partition instead of the system partition; After that, the system is started with the new data. If the system starts successfully, the differential data will be written into the system partition. If it fails to start, the differential data will be discarded and started with the data of the original system partition.

The new mechanism of Android 11 not only has the reliability advantages of A/B partition, but also does not need to occupy a lot of extra space like A/B partition. In any case, the Recovery partition has been abandoned. The machine with Android 11 pre-installed has no Recovery partition at the factory, and the boot partition has taken on the work of the previous Recovery partition. Recovery is an indispensable tool for brushing machines. Where should brushing players go? I’m afraid we have to find another way out.

Android 11 is the easiest Android to upgrade ever?

We know that Google has been making efforts to solve the problem of system fragmentation and strive to upgrade the latest version of Android. To this end, Google has made a lot of efforts, such as implementing the Project Treble mechanism in Android 8.0, separating the system (Android OS framework) from the hardware implementation, and then manufacturers can independently push the new version of Android for devices without re-adapting the driver.

Project Treble separates Google’s Android system framework from drivers provided by hardware vendors.

Project Treble greatly simplifies the upgrade process of Android system, but it is not enough. In Android 10, Google implemented Project Mainline to further subdivide and modularize the system. In Android 10, 14 system components are Mainline, and system components such as media decoder, rights controller, and network components can be updated through the App store like ordinary apps-many friends found that the GPU driver of Android machine can be updated independently this year, thanks to this.

Qualcomm announced that GPU drivers can be updated separately.

In Android 11, Google further subdivides Android components, and the number of Android component modules reaches as many as 20, so the system maintenance of Android will become more flexible than ever. Not only that, Google will also implement the restructuring into the system kernel, and the Linux kernel upgrade of Android will become more flexible.

In the current Android system, Linux kernel upgrade generally needs to go through three steps. First, Google selects a version of Linux LTS as the Android kernel, and puts the Patch； needed for Android to run; Then, Google submitted this kernel to SoC suppliers such as Qualcomm, and the suppliers built it into a kernel adapted to SoC again; Finally, Samsung and other equipment vendors adapt the kernel to different components and Patch the kernel again, making the kernel a version that can really run on Android.

The traditional Linux kernel upgrade process of Android system needs many links, which is very troublesome.

Due to the cumbersome steps, once the current Android machine leaves the factory, the Linux kernel rarely changes. Even for Google’s Pixel device, the kernel is still just the older Linux 4.14.

However, in Android 11, the situation has changed. Google has modularized the system kernel, and the kernel is divided into Generic Kernel Image(GKI) and other GKI modules. If you want to upgrade the Linux version, Google can push GKI directly for Android, and upgrade GKI directly for mobile phones, so you don’t have to go through the complicated steps from SoC manufacturers to mobile phone equipment manufacturers.

Since Android 11, the kernel has been modularized, and a GKI kernel can be used in a large number of Android machines on the market.

It is understood that this feature of Android 11 is required to be enforced on devices with a kernel version higher than Linux 5.4. It can be said that if the device kernel version of Android 11 is above Linux 5.4, it may be the easiest Android to upgrade in history.

Android storage directory folder chaos completely solved?

I believe many people have found that after using Android for a long time, there will be many strange folders in the storage directory, which are generated by various apps. This is actually a problem left over from history.

Where did all the messy folders in the Android storage directory come from?

The internal storage directory of Android was once very small. For example, the ROM of the classic Milestone is only 512M, and the storage space needs to be expanded with an sdcard. Therefore, Android App often saves files in the external storage directory (namely the SD card directory). However, Android did not provide the specification of external storage directory before version 4.3. App used to create its own folder in the sdcard directory at will, and this habit has been preserved until now.

Now, although Android has established a storage specification for the sdcard directory, for example, the Android system stipulates that if an App wants to create a folder in the internal storage space, it needs to be created in the/data/directory, and in the external storage space, it needs to be created in the /sdcard/Android/data/ directory. However, this specification is not mandatory. For various reasons, such as using the third-party SDK, many apps still build their own folders under the sdcard directory, which leads to the confusion of the Android storage directory.

In Android 11, folder chaos is finally expected to be completely solved. Android 11 will no longer allow apps to create directories and files in sdcard, and apps can only write data to private folders in specific directories. At present, some apps have begun to prepare for this. For example, the new version of QQ has changed the storage directory from /sdcard/tencent/ to/SD card/Android/data/com. Tencent. MobileQQ/Tencent/,just to adapt to the new storage mechanism of Android.

summary

In addition to the above, Android 11 has many very meaningful updates, such as stronger privacy protection, improved notification system, etc., so I won’t list them here. Generally speaking, Android 11 is a version that has undergone major reforms from the inside out. It has solved many historical problems of Android. Let’s look forward to it together.