14 DAY TRIAL // While most Android smartphones out there haven't yet received the Android 8 Oreo software update, Google is reportedly already working on the next major release, Android 9, whose codename will start with the letter P.
Android 8 Oreo has two versions, 8.0 and 8.1, the latter being the most recent, released at the end of January 2018. The Oreo series brings quite some exciting features, including Picture-in-Picture (PiP), notification dots, Bluetooth 5 support, Wi-Fi Aware, wide-gamut color, multi-display support, and battery improvements.
For developers, Android Oreo introduces WebView, Java 8 language APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), a Neural Networks API, Autofill framework, notification channels, AnimatorSet, autosizing TextView, new media features, unified layout margins and padding, speech output, app categories, and fonts in XML format.
With Android 8 Oreo, Google also introduced Android Oreo (Go edition), which promises to bring the powerful Android Oreo experience to entry-level, cheap Android smartphones. The first developer preview of Android 8.0 Oreo was released last year on March 21, and the final release was unveiled on August 21, 2017.
Android 9 will follow the same development cycle
It's not yet confirmed by Google, but the upcoming Android 9 operating system will most probably follow the same development cycle that the search giant used for several years. That's why we believe the first Android P development preview should be available for testing by the end of this month.
The first Android 9 developer preview is considered by Google as of alpha quality, but the second developer preview should be considered beta quality and could be released in mid-May 2018. As Google usually targets the end of August for a new major Android release, the third and fourth developers previews are coming in June and July.
As for the new features, Google hasn't said much yet, but there are some rumors that Android 9 could bring a new biometric security method in the form of an iris scanner, support for the so-called "notch," enhanced call blocking functionality, and improved stability by reducing the usage of non-SDK interfaces.
We'll know more in the coming weeks when the first Android P developer preview comes out, as most probably there will be many developers curious to dig deep into its code to unveil possible new features. What we know is that, unfortunately, Android 9 will be available only for Google's Pixel and Nexus devices, at first.