They already admitted on the ADB Podcast that they don't want to remove the ability for OEMs and mobile operators to customize their forks of Android.
We will still be forced to buy new devices even if they are VTS certified.
They have argably been enabled for a while, but Treble is making it even easier. Hopefully this pushes the needle over the line for at least some OEMs/teclos.
But no one want to get computer with Windows 95 (or 98) anymore. Just Android 4.4 is "OK".
Security vulnerabilities? Nobody was ever affected by those (at least in the social circles of the people buying the devices), so why should they care?
They should do a yearly release (eg. Android 2018). Then at the store when they display phones, they'd have to write "Android 2013" instead of "Android 4.4 KitKat."
The only viable alternative was Windows Phone, but that is gone now.
This is why software/hardware needs best before dates.
If it passed VTS it should be able to run AOSP. The new CTS will be an AOSP System image running their VTS passing "drivers".
Even if your vendor doesn't push any updates. At least you should be able to run a number of newer versions of AOSP as long as Android doesn't deprecate those VTS drivers.
If so, this is indeed huge, but I have some serious doubts about it, perhaps because I have felt so very burned by Android so many times in this respect on anything but Nexus devices.
So even in situations where you can install such a ROM, there's very little guarantee key bits of hardware will operate properly. Any non-standard hardware/hardware feature is also fairly likely to break.
I doubt we'll see much change. I hope it'll make it slightly faster but without an agreement with OEMs that has teeth forcing them to be more expedient I can't see this getting much better.
