First Developer Preview of Android 8.1 Now Available

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Published 25 Oct 2017

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Android 8.0 Oreo

Android 8.1 Oreo Developer Preview 1 has officially found its way out into the world.

Google officially announced today that Android 8.1 Oreo Developer Preview 1 is now available for those who want to try out the pre-release software. The Android developer blog includes the standard warnings of course, considering this is a pre-release developer preview and the first of the bunch, saying that some apps may not function properly and there might be general stability issues.

Google does note that folks who want to try the Developer Preview can do so by signing up for the Android Beta Program, which you can do so right here.

Here are the devices that support the first Developer Preview: Pixel 2 XL, Pixel 2, Pixel XL, Pixel, Pixel C, Nexus 6P, and Nexus 5X. If Google sticks to a general routine with these Developer Previews, we will likely see Android 8.1 Oreo launch to the public before the end of 2017.

As far as what’s new, there includes new APIs for neural networks:

“The Neural Networks API (NNAPI) provides apps with hardware acceleration for on-device machine learning operations. The API supports on- device model creation, compilation, and execution. Apps typically do not use NNAPI directly; instead, NNAPI is meant to be called by machine learning libraries, frameworks, and tools that let developers train their models and deploy them on Android devices.”

Android 8.1 Oreo also includes new rules for notifications, updates to the autofill framework, updates to EditText, and much more. You can see the full list right here.

[via Android Developers Blog]