Android phones will soon try to entice users to install the latest update

Google really wants you to install the latest Android update whenever it is released. While the company can’t twist your arm, Google is asking Android phone manufacturers to add a new feature called Android Upgrade Invite to their phones. Google says that the Android Upgrade Invitation is a “user flow that showcases the key new features included in the current available major Android OS upgrade.” It is “intended to help convince users to upgrade their device to the latest OS version.”

As noted, the invitation can be tapped on by Android users to show them the new features and capabilities they will receive by upgrading to a new version of Android. The update can even be installed from the flow. The user flow is the path taken by an app user to complete a task such as the steps taken on an app to complete the purchase of a product. In this case, the task is to get an Android user to install the latest version of the platform.

The invitation can be sent out automatically when a major update is detected (available on Android devices that use Google’s OTA ‘over the air’ update services and have Google Mobile Services). Or, the invitation can be sent out manually by the manufacturer. The manufacturers will have the ability to remove features from the user flow that are not offered on their Android skin, change the text if necessary, and modify the animations and colors to match their branding.

We really can’t say how much the Android Upgrade Invite will change the fragmented world of Android updates. As of May 30th, the latest stable version of Android, Android 13, was on only 14.7% of active Android devices. But this low number has more to do with the various number of Android manufacturers and devices that can be purchased in the marketplace. On the other hand, by reminding some Android users who might not be as knowledgeable about the platform that an update is available, the feature could hike the percentage of users running the latest build.

One thing that the Android Upgrade Invite will do is give more users a better idea of what they can expect when installing the update instead of trying to decipher a changelist provided by Google.