Google Announces Android 7.1 Update That Will Be Available Later This Month As An Open Developer Preview

Google first released Android 7.0 Nougat in late August, and now the company is already preparing to launch its first major upgrade. Earlier today, the company has announced that the open developer preview for Android 7.1 will be available to download for the Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P and Pixel C tablet by the end of October.

Android 7.1 Nougat will finally bring in support for Google’s Daydream VR, the company’s very own virtual reality platform built right into the mobile operating system. Developers would also finally have new SDKs and APIs that would allow them to ready their apps once the 7.1 update is released widely, Google said. The newly announced Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones will be the first devices to run Android 7.1 straight out of the box.

This includes creating up to five shortcuts for their apps and support for circular app icons. The developer preview also comes with image keyboard support which would expand the types of content users can enter from their keyboards like GIFs and stickers.

There’s also the addition of storage manager intent which lets users directly access files and data stored within an app. Android 7.1 will also include various optimizations and bug fixes.

Google may have confirmed that the developer preview for Android 7.1 will be available for the Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P and the Pixel C to be available by the end of October, but it also confirmed that it will be available to older devices like the Nexus 9, Nexus Player and “supported Android One devices.” The only problem here is that the older Nexus devices and the Pixel C will not be able to support the new Pixel launcher, according to ArsTechnica.

The final version of Android 7.1 is slated to be released in early December, but Google didn’t give out a specific date. The developer preview may be intended for app makers, but anyone can apply on the Android Beta site to get it later this month, according to Engadget.