Essential offers up an Android Oreo beta for the Essential Phone

Android smartphone maker Essential promised that it would be releasing an update to Android 8.0 Oreo for its devices soon, and now there’s a beta version of the update available through its developer portal. This is just a beta, as mentioned, but it’s broadly available for anyone interested enough in the Oreo update to try out pre-release software.

As mentioned, Essential said it would deliver an Oreo update back in September, with a promise that it would arrive sometime “in the next couple months.” Oreo was just released for Pixel phones back in August, and came to the Galaxy S8 and S8+ in beta form earlier this month, which means Essential Phones are among the first smartphones to receive the update.

Oreo comes with a few significant changes, including badge notifications for individual apps, a redesigned settings menu and a number of behind-the-scenes improvements designed to help with system speed, overall performance and battery life.

To get the beta, you’ll have to sign up for the beta builds and then grab the update as a download to sideload to your device. It’s not necessarily for the faint of heart, since it also involves installing the latest ADB tool and a bit of technical savvy. But the beta arrival also means the stable version should be available over-the-air before too long.