Google expanded Android update processes, working with Qualcomm to offer an additional year of OS and security upgrades on devices using the chipmaker’s Snapdragon platform.

Qualcomm said it is enabling up to four Android OS versions and four years of security updates, initally on devices running its latest Snapdragon 888 chipset, though a representative told Ars Technica it would expand to other chips in the range in time.

In a blog, Google explained the move was an extension of its Project Treble initiative, which instituted architectural changes in Android in 2017 to make it faster and easier for OEMs to deploy OS updates.

While Project Treble benefitted OEMs, Google explained it required chipmakers to support more iterations of the same OS on each chipset, increasing engineering costs and limiting “the duration for which SoC vendors offered Android OS software support on a chipset”.

Its collaboration with Qualcomm addressed this problem, allowing the same OS framework software to be used across multiple chipsets to “dramatically” lower engineering, development and deployment costs.

Kedar Kondap, Qualcomm VP of product management, stated the change was expected to accelerate “Android OS upgrade” rates on Snapdragon-based devices.