Seamless Android N updates will not be available for current Android devices.
A lot of Android N features have been announced at Google I/O, one of the biggest features that got us excited was seamless Android N updates. Seamless updates will allow you to use your phone while it updates, a feature borrowed from Chrome OS.
Big Android updates are infamous for taking an age before actually making it to intended devices. When you did get them you’re rendered phone-less for 10-20 minutes while your phone updates to the latest operating system.
Android Police learned it is actually possible to achieve seamless updates with current devices but it requires repartitioning your entire smartphone. Current smartphones have one partition; with two partitions, one will allow you to carry on with smartphone duties while the other performs updates.
Repartitioning is a common practice for computers but not for your smartphone. It requires hooking up your smartphone to a PC for configurations. But you would be risking loss of data and killing your smartphone. Google highly recommends not to carry out partitioning.
We most likely won’t see any action from Android manufacturers to implement seamless Android updates. Third party developers can potentially develop a tool that will allow you to repartition your entire phone, but if you want seamless updates the official way, you’ll have to wait for new Android devices running Android N or higher out of the box.
A little bit disappointing but it’s something to look forward to for your future Android upgrade. No doubt we’ll see Apple adopting seamless updates for iOS soon.
For more news, visit What Mobile’s dedicated news page.