Android Nougat's new file-based encryption is a move in the right direction, but Google's efforts to achieve lock screen security are still six years behind iOS
Over the past few years we've heard more about smartphone encryption than, quite frankly, most of us expected to hear in a lifetime.
Context & Ripple Effects
Google has been walking back its encryption deficit in stages: Marshmallow made full-disk encryption a default requirement for new devices whose AES performance cleared 50 MiB/s (Marshmallow's full-disk encryption default), yet by early 2016 fewer than 10% of the world's 1.4B Android phones were encrypted against roughly 95% of iPhones (the sub-10% encryption estimate).
Nougat's file-based encryption is the next step in that sequence — encrypting at the file level rather than the disk level is what makes strong lock screen security usable day-to-day, which is exactly where the analyst locates the six-year gap behind iOS.
First-order effects
- New Nougat devices gain per-file encryption that lets Google enforce lock screen protection without the whole-device tradeoffs of full-disk encryption, directly attacking the gap measured in the 10%-vs-95% encryption split.
Second-order effects
- Low-end phones without the processing headroom to run the new scheme stay unencrypted, pressuring Google toward lighter-weight cryptography — a need later answered by Adiantum for low-power devices.
- Developers face the same default-by-policy pattern Google applied elsewhere, as with the Android 9 rule that pushed app network-traffic encryption from under 20% to 80% (the 80% network-encryption milestone).
Third-order effects
- Because Android updates reach the installed base slowly, encryption parity with iOS arrives years after each feature ships — pushing Google from optional defaults toward mandates and layered user-facing tools like the PIN-encrypted folder in Files by Google.
The trend: Android is closing its encryption gap with iOS through successive defaults and policies, but device fragmentation and low-end hardware keep real-world adoption trailing each announcement by years.