Google will force manufacturers to install the latest version of Android from January 2020. Behind the move are security reasons
Google is rushing smartphone and tablet manufacturers: soon, new devices will no longer be certified if they do not have Android 10 preinstalled. The deadline is very close: January 31, 2020.
This means that, from February 1, 2020, all newly manufactured smartphones and tablets can no longer have Android 9, or they will not be certified by Google. So they will no longer be able to leave the factory with Google apps pre-installed. There will be a period, but it will be short, during which manufacturers can be smart: it will be enough to ask for the certification of the model before January 31, 2020 even if then the smartphones will arrive on the market after that date. This policy of compulsory replacement of the operating system with the latest version available is not new, but in the past Google had adopted it in a much softer way and, above all, granting much longer time frames.
Why are smartphones sold with old versions of Android
The practice of not installing the latest version of Android is very common among manufacturers, especially on mid- to low-end models. It is usually accompanied with a vague promise that the new version will arrive in the future. In this way, people who want to buy a smartphone have a disincentive to choose an inexpensive model: the performance might not interest them, but the new features of the operating system probably do.
Google has long tolerated this modus operandi, giving manufacturers a very large window of time before they have to necessarily install the latest version of Android. For example, Android 6.0 came out in October 2015 and could be pre-installed until January 31, 2017. That’s basically a year and a half later. Android 10 came out in August 2019 and will be mandatory as early as late January 2020, just 6 months later.
Why Google is pushing Android 10
Google’s move is not a whim, but it makes sense. The latest version of Android, in fact, incorporates several new security and privacy control features such as the ability to manage in great detail the permissions granted to individual apps. Older versions of the green robot, on the other hand, left apps much freer to collect user data and use the smartphone however they wanted.
Recent, repeated discoveries of dozens and dozens of apps published on the Play Store that didn’t follow Google’s policies have alarmed both users and Big G itself. Forcing everyone to use Android 10 sooner rather than later may seem like a stretch (and it is, in part), but at least it protects users’ security and privacy a bit more.