Good news for those of you who have the Razer Phone: Android Oreo 8.1 is coming your way in just a few weeks. The company, who bought Nextbit to get their first phone out the door last year, has announced that they are skipping Oreo 8.0, going straight to 8.1, and that a developer preview of the build is now available too.
The preview is only available for sideloading at the moment so unless you are comfortable with that process (unlocking the bootloader, ADB commands, etc), I recommend you wait until it is officially released next month.
The news of the preview came from Razer on Twitter and points to a mid to late April 2018 general availability date. This also means that it is very likely that the update will ship with the yet-to-be-released April Android Security Update patch.
The Razer Phone shipped with Android Nougat 7.1.1 and while security updates have been happening, no major updates have rolled out to the entertainment and gaming focused smartphone.
The jump straight to Oreo 8.1 isn’t new either. As you may recall, the Essential Phone went from Nougat to 8.1 too after the company had stability issues with 8.0. While Razer didn’t indicate they had stability issues, it is interesting that they are skipping 8.0.
