Over the last few months Google has been releasing the latest version of Android, in the form of a developer preview. This is Android 7.0 (Nougat) and what was formerly known as ‘Android N’. The updates have been coming through since March and on a monthly basis in preparation for the final version which was initially scheduled to be released late summer or early fall. When the monthly developer previews started rolling out Google did advise that there would be a total of five preview versions becoming available before the final release. Today, Google has released the next developer preview and for those keeping count, this is the final developer preview, Developer Preview 5.
As a result if you do own either a Nexus 6P, Nexus 6, Nexus 5X, Nexus 9 (Wi-Fi), Nexus 9 (LTE), the Pixel C, the Nexus Player, or the General Mobile 4G, and are running a previous developer preview version of Android N, then you can download and install this latest version. As has been the case over the last few months, if you are already signed up to the Nexus OTA (Android Beta) program, then you should see the update arriving on your device within the next 24 hours and without you having to do anything more. Of course, those who would rather be running the latest version right now, instead of waiting for the OTA to arrive can of course download the factory images and flash them to a supported device in the normal manner.
At the moment the details are a little limited on what this latest update includes, although the blog post on this latest preview does state that this preview version includes an emulator for developers to test apps before the final version goes live, the final Nougat APIs (API level 24) and the latest bug fixes, improvements and optimizations. Either way, with this being the latest and final version of the developer preview, it should stand to reason that this will be extremely close to the finished product, Android Nougat. One which is as close to being customer-ready as it will ever be, with the next stop being the availability of Android Nougat.