Here's how Google sped up OTA update installations in Android 14 QPR2 Beta 1.

Artem Russakovskii (founder of Android Police and APK Mirror) asked his contacts at Google what optimizations were made, and according to what he was told, there were three primary improvements. These include:

1. Android now parallelizes compression operations. OTA installs require individually compressing thousands of small blocks. This resulted in a 26% reduction in install time in Google's tests.

2. Android now batches operations of those small blocks. For example, instead of issuing 200 4KB writes, it issues one write of 800KB. This was a 24% reduction in install time in Google's tests.

3. Google switched the Pixels (Pixel 7 series, Pixel 8 series, Pixel Tablet, and Pixel Fold) to use LZ4 compression instead of GZ. This resulted in a 50% decrease in install time.

1. and 2. are general AOSP improvements so everyone will benefit.

3. Compression algorithms are up to individual vendors, but Google has changed its guidance as its engineers found a better solution, so hopefully OEMs will adopt LZ4 compression in their products as well.

#Android #A14QPR2
Android 14 QPR2 Beta 1.1 has been released!
Release date: November 21, 2023
Build: AP11.231020.016.A1, AP11.231020.016 (Pixel 8/8 Pro)
Security patch level: November 2023
Play Services version: 23.36.14

Google has released a small patch to the first update of Android 14 QPR2 Beta 1 for Pixel 5a to 8 devices. It's final release will be in March 2024. Enroll into the beta program to get OTA directly from Google. Here's the list of fixes.

Download for Google Pixel devices:
Factory Image | OTA update

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#Android #A14QPR2
Android 14 QPR2 Beta 1.1 Changelog & Known issues

Changelog:
• Fixed an issue that sometimes caused some apps to be removed after a system update was installed and then prevented those apps from being installed again. In other cases, affected apps couldn't be installed on a device even if they hadn't been installed previously.
• Fixed other issues that were impacting system stability, performance, and connectivity.

Known Issues:
• An issue with some apps that use the meta-data element unconventionally prevents these apps from being installed by the system.
• Sometimes when a user unlocks the device using their fingerprint, there is no haptic feedback.
• For Pixel Fold devices, sometimes after a user unlocks the device while it's folded, the inner display doesn't turn on after unfolding the device.
• The Assistant At a Glance widget sometimes displays weather information for the wrong location.

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Google's Manifest V3 changes will BLOCK uBlock Origin on Chromium based browsers

uBlock Origin is one of the BEST ad blocker extensions for Google Chrome

Google will now deprecate Manifest V2 & roll out Manifest V3, allowing Chrome to restrict APIs & features to reduce negative impact & fix security issues caused by older API's

Google will deprecate Web Request API in Manifest V3 because it's pretty dangerous since extensions could access & modify ALL the data in a network request, basically changing everything that a user could do on the web

Now, Declarative Net Request API will become the primary way as the extensions cannot access all the network information.

But uBlock Origin uses the Web Request API to perform their ad-blocking functions
So, deprecating Web Request API will KILL uBlock Origin.

Although, uBlock Origin Lite exist & is even Manifest V3-compliant but it is NOT as powerful as uBlock Origin

Note: This APPLIES to Chromium based browsers as well

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YouTube is getting into games, too

YouTube is offering its Premium members, access to a set of online games that can be directly played on either the mobile app or the desktop app.

This was an experimental feature for YouTube premium users back in September and is now available for ALL premium subscribers

There are a total of 37 mini-games available to play that effectively live inside the YouTube app — there’s NO need to download or install them.

Premium members can find the full library of games under the “Playables” section in the Explore tab.

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