14 DAY TRIAL // Google released the final preview of its upcoming Android 8.1 Oreo software update, teasing users with a December release for supported Pixel and Nexus devices.
Promising to bring various enhancements to the Oreo platform, the Android 8.1 update will finally active the hidden imaging chip of Google's Pixel 2 mobile phone. It will also introduce optimizations to Android Go on devices with at least 1GB of RAM, as well as an all-new Neural Networks API to accelerate on-device machine intelligence.
"Starting today we're rolling out an update to the Android 8.1 developer preview, the last before the official launch to consumers in December," said Dave Burke, VP of Engineering at Google. "For Pixel 2 users, the Android 8.1 update on these devices enables Pixel Visual Core -- Google's first custom-designed co-processor for image processing and ML."
With the Android 8.1 Oreo Final Developer Preview installed on a Pixel 2 device, the Pixel Visual Core chip can be enabled via a new developer option. Once activated, it will allow photography apps using the official Android Camera API to capture HDR+ photos. More details can be found in the release announcement.
Android 8.1 Oreo launches in December for these devices
The Android 8.1 Oreo Final Developer Preview is now rolling out to all supported Pixel and Nexus devices running the previous development version. Developers interesting in updating their apps for the upcoming Android 8.1 operating system are encouraged to install this release on their devices.
This Final Developer Preview ships with the official API level 27, the November 2017 security patch, as well as the latest optimizations and bug fixes implemented by Google's engineers. Android 8.1 Oreo launches in December for the Google Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, Google Pixel and Pixel XL, Google Pixel C, Nexus 5X, and Nexus 6P.
Google also recommends developers to update the Android Studio IDE to version 3.0 if they want to build apps for the Android 8.1 ecosystem. However, we don't know how many non-Google devices will receive the Android 8.1 update in December or early next year because the Android 8.0 Oreo adoption has been really slow lately.