The latest beta version of Android 8.0 Oreo for select Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus units ships with support for Dolby Atmos, as first spotted by one user of Samsung’s 2017 flagship lineup who yesterday shared their discovery on Reddit. The proprietary audio standard created by Dolby Laboratories has been a hallmark of premium television sets for many years now and its mobile version is largely similar in the sense that it’s designed to revamp one’s listening experience. The Android surround solution is only available on Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus models equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835, i.e. the units sold in the United States and China. It’s presently unclear whether the international variants of the two handsets powered by Samsung’s own Exynos 8895 chip are also planned to receive the same functionality, though that seems like a probable scenario.
Besides Dolby Atmos support, the latest experimental build of Android 8.0 Oreo for the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus also brings the January Android security patch whose contents Samsung detailed several days back but has yet to introduce it to any of its devices in the West as part of a stable software package. The Oreo beta program for the 2017 flagship duo is officially coming to an end on January 15th, whereas its final signups phase was already concluded yesterday. In total, the project encompassed nine countries and more than 10,000 testers, with Samsung already running it for two whole months without major issues, save for certain Snapdragon 835-equipped variants of the device which had signal issues with one of the earlier builds of the operating system. A stable version of Android 8.0 Oreo is expected to start hitting Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus units by February, which is also when the company should start an Oreo beta program for the Galaxy Note 8.
The Galaxy Note 8’s Oreo beta test is unlikely to run nearly as long as the one for the Galaxy S8 lineup did, primarily due to the fact that the two series feature largely identical software and Samsung’s phablet only has some extra functionalities related to its S Pen stylus. The first Samsung-made devices running Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box should be officially announced late next month in the form of the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus which will reportedly be unveiled at MWC 2018.