Android Oreo is here. Andy Rubin’s Essential Phone was launched back in May this year with Android Nougat 7.0 OS and with an edge-to-edge true bezel-less QHD resolution display. The device also comes with a unique design and also comes with two magnetic dots where you can attach new mods including the 360-degree camera mod. The company has now announced the Android Oreo Beta program for the Essential phone users and the interested users can register for the program and test the beta build for their devices.

Essential Phone Android 8.0 Oreo Beta update
Essential Phone Android 8.0 Oreo Beta update

According to some users on the XDA forum, the update brings new features like revamped settings, changes to the status bar panel, trusted devices fix, battery stats in the status bar panel replaced with a battery saver toggle, Battery percentage displayed in the status bar, status bar indicators flow nicely over the front camera gap to its left, night mode including schedule, sunset/-rise and intensity setting, Bluetooth fixes, fix for fingerprint gesture to pull down notifications, got settings suggestion to enable wifi calling (T-Mobile) and many more.

To recall, the Essential Phone was launched with a 5.7-inch LTPS LCD QHD display with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection, 19:10 ratio and 2560 x 1312 pixels resolution. It is powered by a 2.45GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 (Quad + 1.9GHz Quad) octa-core processor and comes with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of inbuilt storage capacity. It runs on the Android 7 Nougat OS out of the box and comes with a fingerprint sensor on the rear panel and also comes with other sensors including the Accelerometer, Magnetometer and Gyroscope, barometer and Proximity / Ambient light sensors.

Essential Phone
Essential Phone

It features a dual rear camera with a 13-megapixel Dual RGB + Mono camera with image fusion technology along with a secondary 13-megapixel True Monochrome mode f/1.85 lens with Video recording at 4K 30fps and 1080p recording 60fps or 720p 120fps. It also comes with an 8-megapixel front-facing camera with a 16:9 aspect ratio f/2.20 fixed hyperfocal lens, Video recording at 4K 30fps, 1080p 60fps or 720p 120fps.

The device comes with 4x microphones with noise cancellation and beam forming. It is powered by a 3040mAh battery with fast charging and comes with 4G LTE, USB Type C, Bluetooth 5.0, WiFi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac with MIMO, NFC, GPS and GLONASS connectivity options. It measures 141.5mm x 71.1mm x 7.8mm and weighs 185 grams.