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Essential Phone

Andy Rubin founded Android as an independent company and so ran the Android division at Google for several years afterward its acquisition. He left a few years dorsum to work on other projects. His near recent project is Essential, which released its first phone last fall. The Essential Phone is like many phones from that menstruum — information technology shipped with Android vii.0 instead of the brand new 8.0 Oreo. Well, Essential has been working on an 8.0 update, but now information technology says information technology's skipping 8.0 and will get right for 8.one.

The Essential Phone garnered attention last twelvemonth for its bold super-narrow bezel design with the "notch" in the display. This telephone was announced some months before the iPhone Ten, making it the offset to take a chunk out of the screen to house sensors. The issue is the phone's LCD panel goes all the way up to the edge on three sides. There's a fleck of a chin at the bottom of the phone.

Despite the interesting hardware, Essential had to make excuses for the software situation. Information technology said the device would get an update to Oreo by early 2022, but information technology sounds like there's going to exist a filibuster there. Essential started its Oreo beta program ii months ago, allowing owners of the phone to manually install the update and give it a shot. There have been three releases of the Oreo beta and so far, but Essential says it's identified several stability issues that have been difficult to solve.

The new course of action for Essential is to skip Android 8.0 entirely. Information technology says the bugs it's encountering in 8.0 are not nowadays in Android 8.1 Oreo. Therefore, it's going to straight all its efforts to move the Essential Phone directly from Nougat to Android 8.1. That volition likely push the release dorsum by several more weeks, just there will be a beta program for 8.i before long.

Those interested in testing Android 8.1 will have the chance to do and so soon. Just like the Android eight.0 beta, you'll need to accept the Android SDK ready on your estimator to sideload the OTA file. The beta will still have bugs to iron out, then you lot should wait if possible.

Essential has said it will be one of the few OEMs to deliver Project Treble in an update, which might be part of the reason it's taking so long. Devices that ship with Oreo must include Treble, simply Essential is going above and across. Project Treble is a modular arrangement framework that will arrive easier and faster to update the phone next time.

At present read: 25 Android Tips to Brand Your Phone More Useful