When Google unveiled Project Treble back in 2017, the search giant promised Android device manufacturers would find it "easier, faster, and less costly" to push major software updates to their phones, thus helping reduce the scourge of fragmentation we've all been complaining about for a very long time.

On the surface, Big G's efforts these past couple of years may seem to have largely failed, but although only a minority of the world's active Android devices are running the Pie OS build more than 12 months after its general release, things might not be as bleak as you think. ...