The Nokia 6 is now receiving the first Android 8.0 Oreo beta update one week after the Nokia 5 received the same treatment, as per an official announcement recently issued by HMD Global CPO Juko Sarvikas. Device owners who already participate in Nokia’s beta labs program should now be able to apply the update over the air, and those who may want to participate in the beta can head down to Nokia’s official website and apply to become a beta labs member.
As was the case with the Nokia 5, the first Oreo beta update for the Nokia 6 introduces a wide variety of new features, including the picture-in-picture mode and notification dots, as well as improvements to performance and stability. New emoji should also be available as part of the latest firmware, autofill support for passwords is also included, and lastly, the software package distributed by Nokia appears to contain the latest Android security patch for December. As far as public availability is concerned, the testing is usually carried over a period of a few weeks, so if all goes according to plan and no major issues are found in the beta firmware, then it’s very likely that the final Android Oreo package will begin its widespread distribution before the end of the year or in early 2018. The Nokia 5 should follow a similar pattern, and in fact, the same should technically be true for the entire Nokia smartphone lineup launched this year with Android Nougat.
The Nokia 6 was the first Android-powered smartphone released by HMD Global. The device was initially announced in China this January and was introduced to the Western hemisphere at Mobile World Congress in February running Android 7.1.1 Nougat. Spec-wise, the device fits in the mid-range segment, accommodating a 5.5-inch IPS LCD display with a 16:9 aspect ratio and a resolution of 1920 x 1080, as well as Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 430 chipset housing eight ARM Cortex-A53 CPU cores clocked at 1.4GHz and the Adreno 505 graphics chip. The handset was also launched in two main variants, sporting 3GB of RAM and 32GB of memory, or 4GB of RAM and double the on-board storage, with the availability of the two versions varying depending on the market.
#Nokia6 is now joining the #AndroidOreo beta. Subscribe to #Nokiamobilebetalabs to get the update and help us to make the official release just right! https://t.co/91uhqstnnmpic.twitter.com/78C0ywtNfa
— Juho Sarvikas (@sarvikas) December 19, 2017