The LG G6 flagship handset has yet to get an official update to Android 8.0 (Oreo) anywhere in the world just yet, but some users in China seem to have received a beta build, and are chatting about its day to day use and new features over at the Machine Front forum. According to one user who posted about the beta, the supported devices include just about every variant of the LG G6 and LG G6+ sold in China. The same user pointed out that for all of the improvements on board, there are a few serious bugs, including translation errors in the user interface, and bugs that can crash some third-party apps or even cause the phone to become unresponsive.
A number of subtle changes have been made to the user interface overall, resulting in a slightly cleaner look, somewhat akin to the changes between TouchWiz and the Samsung Experience that fans of LG’s biggest competitor got to see debut on the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 8. Some of the information displays, such as battery life, have been cleaned up to be more intuitive, while the settings menu now sports some different icons and has been rearranged a bit. The changes are not on the whole too drastic, but are certainly noticeable, and seem to make for a simpler experience using the phone. The user who posted up the screenshots did not try out LG’s built-in theme store, so there’s no telling at the moment whether the same themes that worked in Android 7.0 (Nougat) will work now.
For the time being, there is no definite timeline for when the update will drop. Since a beta is available in China, it’s safe to say that the update is fairly close to being ready to roll out to users. There are still a few bugs that will need fixing, as stated above, and there will likely be more. Likewise, further changes to the user interface may be made, or some changes may be rolled back before the update becomes official and starts going out to normal users. LG’s 2017 flagship bears a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor while its competitors and its siblings, the LG V30 and V30+, have a more powerful and modern Snapdragon 835 inside, which means that LG may well take their time polishing up this update to focus on newer devices.
