Huawei officially launched its beta test of the Android 8.0 Oreo build designed for the P10 and P10 Plus, with the program going live at some point in the last 24 hours. As is the case with the company’s previous updating efforts, the experimental build of Android 8.0 Oreo for the Huawei P10 series can be downloaded by joining the Friendly User Test program ran by the Chinese original equipment manufacturer. Interested owners of the Huawei P10 and P10 Plus can do so by referring to the banner below, though the number of spots the program accepts is understood to be limited. No exact figures have yet been provided by the firm, with its previous software support practices suggesting the program will initially accept several thousands of testers and may expand its availability in the coming weeks once potentially major bugs are identified and addressed.
The Shenzhen-based tech giant has been actively working on a P10-specific version of Android 8.0 Oreo since at least early fall and has already managed to optimize it for the P10 units sold in its home country. While the international models of the Huawei P10 and P10 Plus also run EMUI, some of their features and interfaces are different and hence need to be polished separately. Huawei’s Mate 9 lineup already received its Android 8.0 Oreo build in early December, with the company surprising some consumers and industry watchers by completely reworking the operating system in order to support Google’s Project Treble on its 2016 flagships. The program entails a redesigned structure of the Android framework that separates the core of the OS from vendor-specific implementations, consequently facilitating the process of distributing updates for compatible devices in a swift and consistent manner.
While Google is only requiring OEMs to support Project Treble on devices that run Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box, Huawei apparently went out if its way to do so with the Mate 9 and will presumably be repeating that feat with the P10 and P10 Plus. Based on the average length of the company’s Android beta tests, the international variants of the P10-series handsets should begin receiving stable Oreo builds no later than spring.
Huawei's Mobile Beta Program