Speaking to The Verge about the Pixel's first Feature Drop update, VP of Product for Pixel Sabrina Ellis claims that one of the features of that update—improved memory management—will eventually come to other Android smartphones. This implicitly confirms that the feature is not a Pixel-specific optimization, but rather a change in the Android platform itself.

The insight here, though, is that this means many Android phones may not take advantage of these changes to the way Android handles RAM for quite some time. That's because Google is likely introducing this change as part of a larger, platform-level update in the Pixel's quarterly Feature Drop, changes many phonemakers may not choose to integrate until Android 11.