It looks like we don’t have much longer to wait for Android P. August 20th appears to be the day and we have, once again, Evan Blass to thank for the news. He posted on Twitter this morning a somewhat cryptic calendar with a bright green “P” on August 20th.
— Evan Blass (@evleaks) August 2, 2018
Given that it is pretty much a given that Android P will launch in August, it wasn’t super hard to figure out what was meant by the post.
Regardless of if you like, don’t like, or vehemently hate sensor notches on smartphones, the reality is that they are coming into vogue. Google themselves are expected to have a notched device in the Pixel 3 XL and there are already notched devices out there from the likes of Essential and Huawei. That said, Android Oreo has never fully supported notches but that changes under Android P.
The Android team over at Google took to the Android Development blog yesterday to outline some key code elements that developers need to use in order to make sure their apps work with a notched device in Android P. They also laid down the law for manufactures too. No device will have more that two notches.
In a surprising announcement, OnePlus has stated that Android P will be coming to the 2016 OnePlus 3 and OnePlus 3T phones. The company has said that in order to do this, they will be abandoning efforts to get Android Oreo 8.1 to these phones and will focus on Android P instead.
After internal discussions and evaluation, we have decided to focus our development resources on the Android P project instead of upgrading the device to Android 8.1, so that we can offer more exciting features and improvements for our OnePlus 3 and 3T users.
The news is surprising in that most 2016 will likely not see the next generation of Android, slated for release as some point in August.
Back in June I posted on a bug that had been introduced in that month’s Android Security Update. The bug caused the Pixel 2 XL to be very slow to wake up if you had the ambient display disabled in Settings. At the time, Google acknowledged the bug and indicated that it would be fixed in the July Android Security Update. Which they did but had to essentially break another fix in order to make this fix work.
Clear as mud? Let me explain.
There was a bug that was impacting some users turning off their Pixel 2 XLs that caused a bright flash before the device entered into the ambient display. That fix, which did fix that issue, broke the wake up process when coming out of ambient mode, thus causing the slow wake ups. To fix the slow wake ups, they had to revert that first fix back to its original code.
Just an hour after Google released Beta 4 of Android P for the Pixel lineup of devices, Essential has released their own Beta 3 for the Essential Phone, which is this latest beta from Google. The update is build is PPR1.180610.066 for those keeping score at home. If you have an Essential Phone registered in the company’s Android P beta program, you should be getting the update today if you don’t have it already through the Beta app from Essential.
Essential, like OnePlus, Oppo, and Sony to name a few, generally runs a few days or weeks behind Google on these releases. Of all the partners, Essential is by far the quickest in getting these updates out but today’s one hour gap, even for them, is fast.
The Android team at Google has released Beta 4 of Android P today. The update is considered a Release Candidate version of the next major version of Android with the feature set complete as well as the API set. Those who have devices registered in the Android Developer Program should see the OTA update to this build over the course of the next few hours.
Beta 4 marks the last update to beta cycle for Android P as it is prepared for release to the general public. That release should happen in August but Google has not confirmed that officially. Nor do we know what it will be named, but Android Pistachio Ice Cream seems to be the odds-on favorite right now.
OnePlus has released a new build of the Android P Developer Preview for owners of the OnePlus 6 registered in the beta testing program. The update is based on Google’s own Developer Preview 4 (Beta 3) which OnePlus has taken and added their special touches that make up their variant, OxygenOS. The update is broadly rolling out now and should be to everyone over the course of the next few days.
As you may recall, when Google announced Android P back at Google I/O, it came with the opportunity for the first time for select devices from select OEMs to participate in the beta program. OnePlus with the OnePlus 6 is one of those. Developer Preview 4 was released for Pixel devices a few weeks back and given that OnePlus has to layer in their own elements that make up OxygenOS, they’ve done a good job of getting it out in a timely manner.
The weeks leading up to a new release of Android are always fun, especially when it comes to the guessing game of what the new version will be named. Google famously names each version after a tasty sweet treat, like Android Oreo for example. The question to this point has been what will Android P be named? Well, it seems Android Pistachio could be in the mix.
The Polish site TableTwo from one of their readers who reached out to Huawei support regarding the recently announced Oreo update for their phones. In the exchange, which you can see the screenshots of at the link above, the tech drops the name Android Pistachio as the name of the next version.