Ever since the announcement of Lollipop back in 2014 at Google’s annual developer conference, they have been releasing developer preview versions of the unfinished Android software that would be launched later on the year. This has continued through with Android Marshmallow and the Android M Preview last year, and this Android users now have their hands on the first Android developer preview software giving them a taste of what the next official Android version will be like once Google pushes the software out to the public. Typically, developer preview software has been limited to Nexus devices only, and a small collection of them at that which includes only the ones that will be supported and planned to receive an Android N update.
Just earlier this week, however, some code was discovered on the Android N Developer Preview web page that suggests Google may be considering bringing the dev preview software to OEM devices that are not in the Nexus lineup. There is no guarantee that this is something Google will end up doing, but the suggestion alone surely excites a whole mess of users who prefer smartphones from outside the Nexus series but still would love to get their hands on early builds of the next Android software to launch. Excitement aside, there would likely be some issues or hurdles to overcome on the path to releasing dev preview software for non-Nexus devices, such as the OEM skins that are attached to most phones. It’s possible that Google would have to pass along the dev preview to the manufacturer to work with it, who could then in turn pass it along to the users for those who wanted to test it out. There is still no confirmation of course that this will happen, but it’s an interesting prospect. Would you want to see the developer preview software for Android N come to OEM devices that aren’t part of the Nexus lineup?
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