Category: Android Oreo 8.1

For those enrolled in the beta testing program for the Essential Phone, it is time to check for a system update.  The first beta of the company’s Android Oreo 8.1 build has been released and testers will be receiving the update via an OTA download.  As you may recall, Essential pulled the Oreo 8.0 build last month, citing issue with stability in the build, and decided to scrap it to move straight to 8.1.

The build has the February Android Security Update patch included and also has a fix for a common problem for users of the Essential Phone:  Slow scroll jitter.  Users have complained that the phone has a lot of jitter when slowly scrolling up or down a patch.  This beta has a fix for it and appears to be working well.  All in, the OTA update is just over 500MB in size so WiFi downloading is a must.

After being in beta for just a few weeks, HMD Global has released the Android Oreo 8.1 update for the Nokia 8.  The news of the release came from the company’s Chief Product Officer, Juho Sarvikas, on Twitter:

We are rolling out #AndroidOreo 8.1 on #Nokia8 ! Get the sweetest Android to date #Nokia8 #Nokiamobile pic.twitter.com/3pRlNuPIpe

— Juho Sarvikas (@sarvikas) February 13, 2018

The news of the release was a bit of a surprise given that the open beta for the 8.1 build only started in late January.

In a somewhat surprising announcement on Twitter yesterday, Essential, makers of the Essential Phone, said that they were abandoning their current Android Oreo 8.0 build to start an 8.1 build for customers.  The 8.0 build has been in beta for a few weeks now and the company stated that stability issues where the driver behind the decision.

An update on the public release of Oreo: pic.twitter.com/fPJRtX7kvY

— Essential (@essential) January 30, 2018

The decision means that any Oreo build for the Essential Phone is going to be delayed, in the company’s terms, “a couple of weeks”.

With the beta program now completed, members of the Android Beta Program are now starting to receive the production build of Oreo 8.1.  Google released this final build yesterday and those with with Pixel devices and Nexus devices that were in the program should start seeing the OTA update to the production build over the next few days.

The update is very small, just over 40MB, reflecting the fact that the second and final beta of Oreo 8.1 was all-but complete.  That small of an update means very few bugs were found to be fixed.

If you are new to the Android Beta Program, there is nothing special you need to do.  The OTA will download to your phone just like any other update from Google.  It is just a matter of when it gets to your account.

Today the second Developer Preview of Android Oreo 8.1 was released to those in the Android Beta Program.  The update brings the November 2017 Android Security Update to the beta program and OTA updates for those with devices enrolled should start flowing today and throughout the next few days.

This will be the last Developer Preview of Oreo 8.1 before it is generally released next month.  You can read about all the major updates & changes coming in Oreo 8.1 here.

The 2nd preview more-or-less fixes bugs and other issues found in the first preview released last month.  The new Pixel Visual Core, which was not in DP1, is now enabled in this second preview.  For those that are familiar with this feature, it is Google’s first co-processor for image processing and Machine Learning.  Currently it is only available in the Pixel 2 lineup.

The first public beta of Android Oreo 8.1 has been released to the Android Beta Program community today.  The new build is OPP5.170921.005 and it is the same across all eligible devices in the program.  That includes the Pixel 2, Pixel 2 XL, Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel C, Nexus 6P and the Nexus 5X.

It has been suspected that this first maintenance build of Oreo was going to be here quickly after the Pixel 2 launch and that has proven to be the case.  Oreo 8.1 does bring some noticeable changes from an end user experience but for developers, there are some significant changes.

From a user perspective, there are minor changes to the UI like colors on the settings menu, a new ambient screen on the original Pixel lineup and Bluetooth power indicators on the notification shade. Most of these are in the new Pixel 2 lineup already but are no going out across other Pixel and some Nexus devices too.

For developers, the API level is up to API 27 but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  There are other new APIs along with refinements to other features of the platform.    Here is the rundown.

Neural Networks API

The Neural Networks API (NNAPI) provides apps with hardware acceleration for on-device machine learning operations. The API supports on-device model creation, compilation, and execution. Apps typically do not use NNAPI directly; instead, NNAPI is meant to be called by machine learning libraries, frameworks, and tools that let developers train their models and deploy them on Android devices.

Added WallpaperColors API

Android 8.1 Developer Preview (API level 27) adds support for managing wallpaper colors. This feature lets you create a WallpaperColors object from a bitmap, a drawable, or by using the first three most visually representative colors. You can also retrieve details of the first three noticeable colors of a wallpaper.