Android is a fantastic bit of software. It brings a good mix of convenience and security features to the table as well as power-user features that nobody would have ever imagined having on a phone just a few years ago. It really is a leap forward towards having a complete personal computer in your pocket.

A lot of cooks from companies that know mobile bake an Android dessert.

A big part of the reason it can do this is because of the smart people who write the code. Google maintains Android's code, but the project is open source and filled with juicy features and functionality from names like Samsung, Motorola, LG, Huawei, and even Microsoft and Apple. From the low-level code that crunches all the numbers to make all the things work to the rounded icons and animations, Android is the product of the people and companies who know mobile best.

The open source nature of Android has also accomplished something else; a thing that's not so elegant and pretty: fragmentation. When 100 different companies grab the source code and build 100 slightly different versions of Android, keeping the devices all up to date is a mountain of work. It also depends on the company who made a phone because technically they also made the operating system. The extra cool features that phone manufacturers add are a double-edged sword — they make the software better, but they also make updating it a lot more work.

Google has tried everything to get a handle on updates and Mainline has been years in the making.

Google has done a lot to try and tame Android updates and make them something that it can manage on its own. Project Treble was an initiative to help companies that make component microprocessors like Qualcomm and NVIDIA able to update their portions of software quickly, and it worked really well. Android Pie adoption is 2.5 times higher than Android Oreo over the first months, and security patches reach 84% more users now. That's an impressive turnaround in just a year, but Google has higher goals with Project Mainline.

Mainline is a way to update the core parts of Android directly from Google in a way that you already are familiar with: the Google Play Store. It's a lofty goal, but I think it's going to help.

What is Project Mainline?