Category: Android Oreo 8.1

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.

HMD Global, the company that owns Nokia, has begun slow rolling the Android Oreo 8.1 update out to the Nokia 5 and Nokia 6.  Starting in India and Indonesia, the update to 8.1 is expected to make its way to all global markets in the coming days.

For both devices, the update is just under 1GB in size and brings with it the March Android Security Update to both phones.  If you don’t recall what all comes in Oreo 8.1, you can get a debrief here.

Google has confirmed that a bug impacting the original Google Pixel XL in Android Oreo 8.1 will be fixed in the coming weeks.  The bug can cause the phone to overcurrent, meaning it takes on too much power during recharging, and in theory could pose a fire hazard.

Google’s John McNulty, Head of Safety and Compliance Engineering for Google Consumer Hardware, took to the product forums for Pixel users and assured the bug would be fixed but thanks to multiple layers of protection, a fire risk remained very low.

After several weeks of beta testing, the Android Oreo 8.1 update for the Essential Phone has been released.  The update, some 1.7GB in size, is available to everyone so you should be able to check for the update and download it.

The update comes after the announcement early this year that the company would be abandoning the 8.0 build of Oreo due to stability issues and would focus on 8.1.  That process, fortunately, did not take long.  In fact, the first beta of Oreo 8.1 for the Essential PH-1 was released just last month.

The LineageOS team has announced that starting tomorrow, their new 15.1 build will be released to select devices.  This build is an important milestone as it brings the Android variant up to Oreo 8.1 as the base.

We’ve been working hard these months to get this new version available; the changes that were done in upstream (AOSP) are huge: Project Treble changed the way hardware is managed in Android, so all the OEM-abandoned platforms that are supported by Lineage had to be adapted for the new platform. Moreover, we’ve taken the time to make the code future-proof by converting a lot of our hardware-related code to make use of the new Treble capabilities: things such as LiveDisplay and lights (leds) control are now up to date with the new Android standards, so we’re going to have an easier time forward-porting stuff whenever a new Android version comes out.

Along with the update to Oreo 8.1, there are also some new features that have come along in this build.  Styles allows you to change the accent color that will also change from a light to dark theme based on the time of day (if enabled).

In a backwards kind of way, LG has announced that the LG V30 and the LG G6 will both be getting updated to Android Oreo 8.1 and soon.  Why?  Because the company announced that both devices will be a part of the Android Enterprise Recommended program once that update rolls out to them.

The press release from LG made it clear that acceptance of these V30 and the G6 was contingent on the Oreo 8.1 update rolling out to the devices.  While not in the press release, undoubtedly Google put timeframes on the contingency meaning that LG is going to have to get the updates out sooner rather than later.