The Nexus 6P is easily one of my all-time favorite Android phones. Packing in great design, a decent camera, and tons of power, the handset was a brilliant device with many USPs.
And because it’s a Google phone, Android updates come fast. And today we have the first tidbit of information about when Android Oreo will bet hitting the Nexus 6P.
According to an official update tracker maintained by Canadian cell carrier Rogers, Android Oreo for the Nexus 6P will land on September 11 – so, if you’re reading this today, next week.
Carriers always need to make a few tweaks to any update in order to get it working on their network, but the fact that Rogers is eyeing a September 11 release likely means other networks and carriers will follow shortly thereafter.
Android Oreo is a pretty significant update that brings with it plenty of new features, changes, and optimisations. The best of which are detailed below:
- Improved Notifications
- Better Battery Management
- Picture-In-Picture Mode
- Adaptive Icons
- Improved Sound Quality
- Password Autofill
- Multi-Display Support
- Improved Keyboard Input
“We've been working closely with our partners over the last many months,” said Google, “and by the end of this year, hardware makers like Essential, Huawei, HTC, Kyocera, Motorola, HMD Global Home of Nokia Phones, Samsung, Sharp, and Sony are scheduled to be launching or upgrading new devices to Android 8.0 Oreo.”
And one of the biggest editions to Android Oreo, an update that took upwards of 300 Google developers to create, is Treble – Google’s longterm plan for culling fragmentation within the Android ecosystem.
“Project Treble will make Android work more like the PC market,” reports Are Technica, “where a single version of an OS can run on multiple devices. It's been obvious that Android needed to make a change like this for some time, but Treble was a massive project and counts for a lot of what makes Android 8.0 a full "1.0" update.”
How it works, in essence, is rather complicated. Previously, Android OEMs had to undertake a huge amount of coding when dealing with new Android updates, however, with Treble initiating things from the point of manufacturing.
"Project Treble aims to do what CTS did for apps," said Google, "for the Android OS framework. The core concept is to separate the vendor implementation — the device-specific, lower-level software written in large part by the silicon manufacturers — from the Android OS Framework.”
This process is achieved via the introduction of a new vendor interface between the Android OS framework and the vendor implementation, whereby the new vendor interface is validated by a Vendor Test Suite (VTS), analogous to the CTS, so as to ensure the forward compatibility of the vendor implementation.
“With a stable vendor interface providing access to the hardware-specific parts of Android, device makers can choose to deliver a new Android release to consumers by just updating the Android OS framework without any additional work required from the silicon manufacturers,” added Google.
Not all Android phones will get it, but those that do will benefit from improved battery life, picture-in-picture capabilities, improved background downloads, and better OTA updates.
Most new handsets released in Q4 will feature Android Oreo out of the box. Those running older Android phones released at the beginning of the year should expect updates to start appearing around December or early-Q1.
