Legacy Qualcomm platform bringup

Problem

The Device shipped with Android 6.0 on a Qualcomm MSM8994 chipset and a Linux 3.10 kernel, which is ancient by modern standards. Bringing Android 15 to this hardware meant bridging a decade old kernel with a modern AOSP stack that expects completely different driver interfaces, security requirements, and framework APIs.

Approach

Kernel work:

• Backported critical patches from newer kernel versions to the 3.10 tree (security fixes, driver updates, and compatibility shims)
• Patched the ancient Qualcomm BSP drivers to work with modern Android's hardware abstraction layers
• Fixed boot issues, display drivers, and power management quirks specific to the MSM8994 platform

Framework and device tree work:

• Modernized the device configuration for Android 15's build system and SELinux policies
• Patched framework code where AOSP assumed hardware capabilities that didn't exist on this chipset/kernel
• Wrote compatibility layers for deprecated HALs that legacy blobs still relied on

Result

Android 15 boots and runs on hardware that Qualcomm abandoned years ago. The device is stable enough for daily use, with working display, touchscreen, Wi-Fi, and cellular connectivity. This proved that even severely outdated platforms can be brought forward with the right kernel patches and framework workarounds, valuable for OEMs supporting long-lifecycle industrial devices on old chipsets.