[Moto G 2015 General] rahul9999:
It's hard to pin down the Android codename in advance thanks to Google's notorious trolling. Remember Key Lime Pie and Milkshake? This time, everyone's first guess turned out to be the right one. Google has named Android 8.0 "Oreo" after the cookies produced by Nabisco.

Most Android names are generic treats like Marshmallow and Nougat. However, this is not the first time Google has worked with a company to use a name brand. KitKat was a surprise announcement in 2013. The agreement between Google and Nestle/Hershey includes some cool limited edition KitKat candy bars, too. It is unclear if there will be similar Android-themed Oreo packaging, but Google must have some manner of agreement allowing it to use the Oreo trademark. The statue does at least look a bit more daring than other recent bugdroid mascots.

There's not much new to report on the features in Oreo—we've been playing with the developer preview for months, after all. You can expect picture-in-picture support for apps, autofill apps, faster boot times, and those god-awful new emoji. Oreo is being rolled out to AOSP today, and updates for the Pixels and recent Nexus devices are in final testing now. You can expect the OTA soon on those devices.

Google has just announced that Android 8.0 Oreo will be uploaded to the Android open Source Project today, and that updates to the newest version of the platform are currently being tested by carriers for the Google Pixel, Nexus 5X, and Nexus 6P. Google says these updates will begin rolling out in phases "soon," along with updates for the Pixel C and Nexus Player.

Google has not clarified when factory images or OTA files will be available for devices at this time.

As a reminder, Android Oreo brings a number of new features to the table, including notification dots, enhanced speed, a brand-new set of emoji , more aggressive battery life management, and [finally] OS-level autofill.

Source : Google, AndroidPolice

Android 8.1 is the next version of the OS, Google app reveals..

Android 8.0 Oreo has only been out for a couple of weeks at this point, and hasn't actually made it to every single supported Nexus and Pixel device out there yet. Not to mention how long it's going to take for it to land on any other phone or tablet.

Even so, maybe you'd like to know what the next version of the OS will be? It's Android 8.1, by the way. This has been revealed by a teardown of the latest iteration of the beta Google app. The SDK used internally by the company to build said app outright says so.

As for the name, it makes most sense for Google to keep using Oreo - it would be a shame to switch from such a well recognized brand so soon, and it's also how it did things last year with 7.0 and 7.1 both being Nougat. If you're wondering when 8.1 will hit, remember that in 2016 Android 7.1 debuted with the Pixels only a couple of months or so after 7.0 updates started going out. So we assume that this year the second-gen Pixels will be the first devices to launch running Android 8.1, when they land in October.

Source : - Google, GSMARENA

Google announces Android 8.1 developer preview, final release planned for December

Google launched the new Pixel phones with Android 8.0, which is what last year's Pixel's have been running since the update. A new version of Oreo is on the way, though, and you can try it right now. Google has launched a developer preview for Android 8.1. As usual, it's supported on recent Google devices and can be installed in two ways.

The system images are available for download now, but that requires an unlocked bootloader. The beta program with automatic OTA updates will be available as well. You can sign up now, but it looks like the switch hasn't been thrown to push out the OTAs just yet. If you want to get on the dev preview, it's compatible with the following devices. The OTA files are available for sideloading, though.

Nexus 5X

Nexus 6P

Pixel C

Pixel

Pixel XL

Pixel 2

Pixel 2 XL

The Android 8.1 preview runs from today until the OS is released, which Google expects to happen in December. Installing the preview should not affect your data, but you never know. Running a developer preview does come with some risk, so make sure you've got your data backed up. Leaving the beta program will result in a device reset as well.

Google has a developer-oriented changelog up. Here's what you can expect in the new version.

Neural networks API: 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.

Notifications: Apps can now only make a notification alert sound once per second. Alert sounds that exceed this rate aren't queued and are lost. This change doesn't affect other aspects of notification behavior and notification messages still post as expected.

Improved targeting for low-RAM devices

Autofill framework updates: custom descriptions that the Android System shows in the autofill save UI, specify a Validator object that your app can use to decide if the Android System should show the autofill save UI, and more.

EditText updates

Programmatic Safe Browsing actions: Devs can control whether an app reports known threats to Safe Browsing, and have the app automatically perform a particular action—such as going back to safety—each time it encounters a URL that Safe Browsing classifies as a known threat.

Video thumbnail extractor: The MediaMetadataRetriever class has a new method, getScaledFrameAtTime(), that finds a frame near a given time position and returns a bitmap with the same aspect ratio as the source frame, but scaled to fit into a rectangle of given width and height.

Shared memory API: Android 8.1 (API level 27) introduces a new SharedMemory class. This class allows you to create, map, and manage anonymous shared memory that can be used by multiple processes or apps.

WallpaperColors API: Adds support for managing wallpaper colors. This feature lets you create a WallpaperColors object from a bitmap, a drawable, or by using the first three most visually representative colors. You can also retrieve details of the first three noticeable colors of a wallpaper.

Fingerprint updates

Source - AndroidPolice, Google