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Android 8.1 Oreo goes final, rolling out now to Pixel and Nexus devices.
After two developer previews, Android 8.1 Oreo is ready for the masses. Google announced that the new OS is rolling out now and is posting system images for the Pixel 2 and 2 XL, the Pixel 1 and 1 XL, the Pixel C tablet, and the Nexus 6P and 5X. The Android Open Source Project (AOSP) code drop should be happening now, too.

Android 8.1 Oreo is a minor maintenance release after the major update of Android 8.0. The biggest feature in 8.1 is a new "Neural Networks API" (NNAPI), which is designed for running machine learning operations on mobile devices. Phones with specialized machine learning hardware can hardware accelerate this API, while older devices can use a CPU fallback mode. The API provides a base layer higher-level machine-learning framework to plug into, like Google's TensorFlow Lite.

Further ReadingGoogle releases “Android Go” to OEMs, along with a suite of low-end Google appsOne of the first phones to ship with one of these special machine learning co-processors for the NNAPI is the Pixel 2, which is packing a custom, Google-designed eight-core SoC called the "Pixel Visual Core." This is Google's first ever consumer SoC, and it lives alongside the usual eight-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 835. The Pixel Visual Core—which was designed with help from Intel—will power NNAPI functions, and it allows Google's HDR+ image processing to run "5x faster and at less than 1/10th the energy." It shipped in a dormant mode when the Pixel 2 was released, but with the release of Android 8.1, Google is turning it on for everyone.

Android 8.1 also marks the release of "Android Go" for OEMs. Google's "Go" initiative strips down the Android OS and many of the Google apps to run better on low-end devices with 1GB of RAM or less. Google is chasing "the next billion users" with this move, a reference to the 3.5 billion people in the developing world that will access the Internet for the first time from a low-end smartphone.