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Android 8.0 Oreo system images have been released:
Android 8.0 Oreo is shipping out across all the usual distribution methods. The Android Open Source Project (AOSP) is getting the 8.0 code drop. OTAs will begin to roll out "soon" to the Pixel, Pixel XL, Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus Player, and Pixel C, and system images should be up on developers.google.com soon. Any device enrolled in the Android Beta Program will also be upgraded to these final builds.
Thanks to several developer preview releases, we mostly know what's in Android 8.0 Oreo. The update brings a big revamp of the notification panel, with a new layout, colors, and features, like "snoozing." Google is clamping down on background apps for more consistent performance and better battery life. There are new, updatable emoji, a faster startup time, all new settings, and plenty of security enhancements, including the new "Google Play Protect" malware system. Most importantly, Android 8.0 brings Project Treble to new devices, a modularization of the OS away from the hardware, which should make it easier to develop and roll out new Android updates.
Google blog. And "When will your device actually get Android Oreo?"
Previously: iOS 11 Versus Android O on a Tablet? It's Not Even Close
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RedBear on Wednesday August 23 2017, @05:55AM (12 children)
This is from the perspective of an Android outsider: I find Android fragmentation to be supremely annoying.
I've had iPhones for several years and for a long time was not very impressed by Android. But I liked what I saw in Android 6.x and especially Android 7.x. I wanted to find an inexpensive small tablet running Android 7.x to play with so that I could learn and get used to the interface and quirks in preparation for moving away from iOS at some point in the future. I don't care about performance that much, I just wanted something cheap and at least usable that was running the latest Android.
LOL. All of the affordable stuff is still stuck on Android 4.x or 5.x and in most cases (as far as I understand) would not be easily upgradeable to even the next version above what it came with, much less anything beyond.
I can count on one hand the number of devices I've found that come with Android 7.x and they are all quite expensive, not much cheaper than an iPad. Oh, and pretty much all of them like the Samsung device come with each manufacturer's proprietary interface and stupid apps pre-installed rather than stock Android. But I want to learn plain stock Android, not some BS that will probably be irritatingly different from any phone I eventually move to. Pretty much the only way to get stock Android apparently is to buy a Google device. And, at the same time, apparently the only way to be assured of being able to upgrade to the next major version of Android without a huge hassle is to just buy a Google device because it will probably be natively supported with an official update to the next version. Maybe. If you're lucky.
Now, I understand that Android is not the same as iOS, you don't technically _need_ to have the latest version. But Android has improved so immensely in consistent design and usability over the last couple of major versions that I would be extremely irritated to use a device with 4.4 or 5.x on it. Or even 6.0. And now they're already moving on to 8.0 while virtually no devices yet come with 7.x. Gaahh!
I'd love to find out that I'm completely misunderstanding how easy it would be to get an inexpensive Android device and upgrade it to 7.x or 8.x. All of my reading has so far indicated to me that this is something only doable on certain device models from certain manufacturers, and that inexpensive devices probably won't handle the latest Android versions worth a darn even if it's possible to upgrade them.
Am I completely wrong in how I perceive the Android universe? Because I'd love to have a cheap tablet to mess with that can run this new Android 8.0. But at the glacial pace the Android world seems to move I wouldn't expect to see an affordable tablet running Android 8.x until about... 8 years from now. I'm not even trying to be hyperbolic in any way, that is my honest prediction of when I might first spot a sub-$150 tablet natively running Android 8.x from the factory.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ledow on Wednesday August 23 2017, @07:09AM (3 children)
As someone who manages 100's of iPads, you also don't want to be forced onto the latest version or everything you do on the device obsoleted either. We've had that three times now, where devices purchased are effectively obsolete because of a forced OS change / stagnation, which means you can't update to the new app versions, which means you're stuck forever at some version that doesn't work or isn't compatible with the version on other devices that you have.
And I can find a Android 7.0 tablet quite easily, and much cheaper than an Apple (it literally took SECONDS to find, there are dozens more on Amazon just searching for: "android 7.0" tablet ):
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Expandable-processor-Bluetooth-Multi-touch-Pre-loaded/dp/B073XQLB7Z/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1503471832&sr=8-3&keywords=%22android+7.0%22+tablet [amazon.co.uk]
It's all swings and roundabouts, anyway. Personally, you couldn't give me a free iPad. I'd just sell it, buy a cheap Android tablet and then when it's obsolete, buy another. Just buy what you want now, rather than what you might want tomorrow. Things are so transferable and "cloudy" now in that regard that it's pointless trying to cling on to something forever.
Personally, every time they change the UI, I get more pissed off. There's no need to change the way it works, just add features to it. If you need a "redesign" every iteration, it means your last design was shit.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday August 23 2017, @12:56PM
Personally, I prefer they work on stability and performance. Features just means more useless crap eventually culminating to an "upgrade".
(Score: 2) by RedBear on Wednesday August 23 2017, @01:34PM
I've tried searching for exactly that on the US Amazon store. Unfortunately their search algorithm is so loose it mostly just ends up showing me 7" tablets that aren't running Android 7.0. A lot of weird little proprietary things and things that say "KitKat" in the title. It's been quite frustrating.
Whoa, just found one for $69 that's supposedly got Android 7.0. Might have to try that. Wait, no, it's a phablet even. Crazy. And there's a 10" tablet for $105. I'm having strangely better luck this time. The best I could find just a few weeks ago was one running Android 6.0.
It's not that I want a device that lasts forever, although I am used to iPhones and iPads that are usable for years, mostly being upgradeable through at least one and usually two or even three major versions of iOS before seeing a major performance penalty. No, what I specifically wanted is access to the newest revamped design semantics of Android 7.x and beyond. It seems that starting with Android 6.x Google started taking the need for intuitive and consistent UI design more seriously, and with Android 7.x I finally saw something that might not be too painful to switch to after living through eight different major revisions of iOS.
Being a bit of an Anglophile I am surprised I've never encountered the phrase "swings and roundabouts" before. It's a particularly obtuse turn of phrase. I usually use "six of one, half-dozen of the other" in similar contexts.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday August 23 2017, @07:30PM
Same search on the U.S. site yoelds a bunch of tablets with older versions of Android on them even with display by relevance. Very annoying.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Wednesday August 23 2017, @08:17AM (1 child)
NVidia Shield [nvidia.com] - gaming mostly, but it's upgradable across 2-3 Android firmware versions at least. It is the tablet of choice for game studios for this reason.
Can be bought at around $300-$400 on Amazon, if I'm not mistaken.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by BananaPhone on Wednesday August 23 2017, @02:20PM
True!
When you buy it, the Nvidia Shield K1 comes with Android 5.
Then it upgrades twice to reach Android 7.
It's a no brainer in terms of value and performance.
(PS: Not a gamer)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23 2017, @10:03AM (1 child)
I don't find the fragmentation annoying. I accept that as the cost of having phones that are different.
Google removing features is more annoying.
e.g. https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/37008191 [google.com]
It used to be that an app could turn on/off mobile data. This functionality was removed in later Android versions.
Adding the ability for people to control which apps have permission to do that would be progress. But instead Google removed the ability for apps to turn on/off mobile data and said: Won't Fix (Intended behavior)
I suppose it makes it easier for Google and friends to spy on us when we don't have ways to programmatically/automatically turn off our mobile data.
(Score: 3, Informative) by sjames on Wednesday August 23 2017, @07:39PM
I like my Android 6.0 phone, but is is REALLY obsessed with mobile data. If I turn off WiFi, no biggie, the icon goes grey and that's done. Turn off mobile data and it asks when it should turn it back on (in increments of minutes). If I say never, it obeys but gives me an un-dismissable notice that mobile data is off.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by metarox on Wednesday August 23 2017, @04:07PM
I worked on Android for a device manufacturer and I have to say that I wasn't impressed either. The problem with Android is that OEMs, like device manufacturers, are 3rd in line after Google and the SOC manufacturer (hardware drivers). So after Android X comes out, it takes months for it to be ported to SOC Y (that's if the SOC is recent and on the fast track list else you may never get it), then the OEM gets it and it takes months to port all the crap to it because 3/4 is borked because all the APIs/system behaviour changed or you fail CTS testing and need to find a new way of doing the same thing (a good example of this is the abysmal SD card support in Android) , etc.
And finally you have the carriers as an extra annoying and burdensome hurdle (the US ones are the worst in that respect in my opinion) for OTA approval. Now multiply that by a few devices on different SOCs from OEMs and you can see that maintaining Android is a resource hog for companies which is why most don't really update devices or even patch them for security issues once they put the effort of shipping and selling the device.
Android should of adopted a model where major releases with API (SDK and internal) breakage only happens ever 2 years, while the mid-cycle refresh adds new stuff/fixes/patches that doesn't break backwards compatibility and is mostly transparent. This would of eased the pressure for the release cycles and probably would give more time to OEMs to update their devices will less effort. It's easy to see that Google devices are at a net advantage over other OEMs (same as the Apple model) since they have access to the software stack continuously over the time they develop the next release. When Android X is announced, their devices are already fully supported.
In the end, I don't think the issue will resolve itself and Android will be fragmented forever and if you don't care about security or version updates, you'll buy whatever OEM you like and if you want devices that are a bit more up to date then you'll buy the more expensive Google device or the equivalent Iphone.
(Score: 3, Informative) by urza9814 on Wednesday August 23 2017, @05:55PM (2 children)
But that's the best thing about the Android ecosystem -- you don't have to be a prisoner of the OEMs.
Personally, I'd just pick anything off this list and start from there:
https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ [lineageos.org]
Here's the first tablet I saw on the list...$128, and while it only has Android 7 support right now, it has been confirmed it will be getting Android 8 as well. So it's not "from the factory", but otherwise it does meet your criteria of being under $150 and easily upgraded to Android 8:
https://www.amazon.com/Android-PixelMaster-TouchScreen-Quad-Core-Processor/dp/B01FGCXUDU/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1503509779&sr=1-1&keywords=Z380KL [amazon.com]
I've got LineageOS 14.1 (Android 7) on my three year old Galaxy S5, and it still runs better than when it was brand new with the stock rom. You certainly can't say that about a three year old iOS device! And you get excellent additional features like Privacy Guard and root access. Takes an afternoon to get it set up, most of which was spent backing up my files. If it's a brand new device and you don't have any data on it to worry about it probably won't take more than an hour or two.
(Score: 2) by RedBear on Thursday August 24 2017, @05:47AM (1 child)
Thank you for taking the time to point out something specific. I hadn't heard of this LineageOS before. Hopefully I can follow all the install instructions.
I actually looked at the ZenPad but was turned off by the fact that it's not stock Android UI. Plus the base OS is just Android 6.0. I guess the question now is how close LineageOS is to stock Android. It would be nice to have something close to stock Android 7.x on a brand-name quality device like the ZenPad.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 3, Informative) by urza9814 on Thursday August 24 2017, @01:36PM
It's a fork of the old Cyanogenmod which you might be more familiar with. Cyanogenmod went commercial and died so the same community picked up the open source components and rebranded as LineageOS.
AFAIK it pretty much IS just stock Android, with any Google/OEM bloat ripped out since that stuff isn't open source. It does have Privacy Guard, which I love, but I think something like that has been added to stock Android now too. That just lets you customize the permissions you grant to each application -- something Android should have had since day one. There might be some other additions I'm not aware of, but if so they're pretty minor. And it's open source so you aren't going to get marketing bloat like TouchWiz or S Voice or whatever else you get on most stock roms. But "stock Android" is a bit vague too -- if you're thinking of something like a Nexus, LineageOS is actually going to be significantly lighter. Because the Nexus roms aren't just Android, it's Android plus a bunch of preinstalled Google apps.
Of course, if you do want those Google apps (because you probably want at least the app store) you can still install them separately. And that also lets you pick exactly the ones you want. You could skip it entirely if you wanna get apps from F-Droid or Amazon or something; if all you want is the app store, you can do that; if you want Gmail and Google Now and everything else, you can get all of it. There's a number of packages available from http://opengapps.org/ [opengapps.org] , and it looks like some even include older apps that Google no longer supports should you want any of those.