Today at 2:40 p.m. Eastern, the Android team will be hosting a live web event to announce the public availability of Android O. The timing of the event coinsides with the solar eclipse that is happening and, you guessed it, will be at its height at 2:40 p.m. in New York.
The stream of the event will be available on YouTube and there will be a live video stream with the launch stream from NASA showing the eclipse. You can watch the stream below:
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Yeah, so my opinion is go outside and see the eclipse (with proper eye protection of course). That’s a rare event and while I’m a big fan of the ‘Droid, I think the timing of this is silly at best and marketing gone array at worst. My .02. And to top it off, there isn’t really anything outside of the official name that we don’t already know about Android O anyway at this point.
Android O has had four Developer Preview builds and plenty of digital ink has been spilled on all of the changes coming in what is officially Android 8.0. Features like Picture-in-Picture, improved app background optimization to improve battery life, notification channels and other improvements to Nougat are on offer. There are also visual tweaks to the platform but this is very much an evolutionary update to Android, not revolutionary.
There has been plenty of speculation of what the name will be for the release with Google themselves dropping hints that it will be Android Oreo. Personally, I think Google is trolling everyone on it but we will know soon enough.
One thing for sure is don’t expect to see the new Pixel 2 or Pixel XL 2. Those devices will likely not be officially released until late September or early October. For those who have Pixel devices today, the Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X, it is very likely that Android O will be available later today.
