Maybe we can benefit from this in 2 or 3 years? I'm very pessimistic... it takes LOOOOOOONG before vendors will look into Android O and the interfaces and the first generation benefiting from this will be earliest Android P updates. And do not forget: This whole process does not reduce testing time and the carriers might also look for long testing on updates ;)
An improved vendor abstraction layer might make porting easier but it still doesn't provide any incentive for vendors to actually update old devices. :(
