The team behind CyanogenMod is getting ready to push out Android 7.1 Nougat to multiple devices in the near future. According to a post by Steve Kondik on the CyanogenMod blog earlier this afternoon, CM 14.1 is going to start being pushed out to compatible devices as early as this evening, although there is no mention of an exact time. There are a handful of smartphones which are going to be getting the software which includes the likes of the Nexus 6P, and that shouldn’t be a surprise given that it already has access to Android 7.1 Nougat through the developer preview.
Other phones which are being included in this push are the Nexus 5X, naturally, as well as the Xiaomi Mi 3 and Mi 4, the LG G3, various models of the Moto G, the LG G4, the Samsung Galaxy S5, the OnePlus 3, and the ASUS ZenFone 2. While the two Nexus devices on this list were likely expected, there are a handful of phones here that would not be getting Android 7.1 Nougat right away or at all, so this will be a nice bump to help keep these devices alive with fresh software a little bit longer, as well as introduce them to some new features.
Having said that, an important detail of note is that this is not fully baked software. As mentioned by Kondik, these are the beginning of the Nightly Builds, which means there are chances that some features will not work and may need time to go through development before things are fully functional. If you’re familiar with CyanogenMod and the territory that comes with flashing custom firmware to your device, then you probably already know that Nightly Builds are unstable in some areas, even if only slightly. Also worth mentioning, is that the phones listed above are only the devices that are part of the “first push” so there will be other devices that are added to the Nightly Build compatibility list. Unfortunately, there is no time frame for how long that will take. With the nature of how quickly the team behind CM tends to work, though, chances are it won’t be very long at all, as it was only back at the end of September when CyanogenMod 14 starting dropping for some devices, and even a few days prior to that a build of it showed up for the HTC HD2. As is standard with these types of software builds, Kondik urges users who flash the software to abstain from filing bug reports about features that aren’t there, as they are still working on more stuff to be added. He also does point out that bug reports for actual bugs are ok. If you’re the type that likes to tinker with their phones, and you have one of the ones listed as being compatible, you might want to be ready for a taste of Android 7.1 Nougat soon.