In the past, Google would release the source code for every quarterly Android release, of which there are four each year. Thus, the company is now reducing its source code releases from four times a year to twice a year, focusing its efforts on the Q2 major update and Q4 minor update which both bring developer-facing changes.

A spokesperson for Google offered some additional context on this decision, stating that it helps simplify development, eliminates the complexity of managing multiple code branches, and allows them to deliver more stable and secure code to Android platform developers. The spokesperson also reiterated that Google’s commitment to AOSP is unchanged and that this new release schedule helps the company build a more robust and secure foundation for the Android ecosystem. Finally, Google told us that its process for security patch releases will not change and that the company will keep publishing security patches each month on a dedicated security-only branch for relevant OS releases just as it does today. (For more context on Google’s security patch release process, check out this article.)

Sounds like the main impact is quarterly feature updates, which will now be every 6 months. Curious if any AOSP ROM devs have any hot takes on this.