As rumored, Samsung has begun the public beta testing of their Android Oreo build for the Galaxy S8. The program officially kicked off today and is expected to run for at least a couple of months. It is good news for S8 owners as Samsung is notoriously slow about getting major updates out to their devices. It would see, at least with Oreo, Samsung is trying to reverse the trend.
Unlike the beta program for Google’s Pixel and Nexus devices, Samsung is being very limited in the number of Galaxy S8 owners who get the beta & who have signed up for the program. In talking to their technical support team today, I was informed that a small number of users who had signed up for the beta were randomly selected and were offered the OTA update to the beta. When I asked if this would be expanded later, the support agent indicated it was possible but that she could not comment.
If Samsung were to get their Oreo update by early next year for the S8, it would still put them well up the list on device who have the latest version of Android. While many manufactures have indicated that an update is coming to their devices, only a few actually have it on their phones outside of Google themselves.
If you signed up for the beta and didn’t get it, there isn’t much you can do. Hopefully Samsung will indeed expand the pool of testers shortly.
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