Android 8.1 Oreo Final Developer Preview out; release in December

Google has outed the final preview of its upcoming Android 8.1 Oreo software update. Android 8.0 Oreo will make its way to eligible Pixel and Nexus devices in December.

Besides bringing several enhancements to the Oreo operating system, the Android 8.1 update will activate the hidden imaging chip of the Google Pixel 2 smartphone. It will also make optimizations to Android Go on devices with that carry at least 1GB of RAM. In addition, Android 8.1 update will bring 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," he added further.

Once the Android 8.1 Oreo Final Developer Preview is installed on a Google Pixel 2 device, the Pixel Visual Core chip in it can be enabled with a new developer option. After it is enabled, the chip will allow photography apps using the official Android Camera API to take HDR+ pictures. You can find more details in the official release announcement.

Currently, the Android 8.1 Oreo Final Developer Preview is being rolled out to all the eligible Pixel and Nexus devices that run the previous development version. Developers can install the release on their phones.

The Final Developer Preview of Android 8.1 Oreo includes the official API level 27, the November security patch, minor optimizations and bug fixes. The devices confirmed to receive the Android 8.1 Oreo in December are the Google Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, Google Pixel and Pixel XL, Google Pixel C, Google Nexus 5X, and Google Nexus 6P.

We are not sure which are the non-Google devices that will be updated to Android 8.1 in December or in early 2018. Presumably, it will take some time as only a very few devices has received the Android 8.0 Oreo update so far.