HMD Global, the home of Nokia phones is doing an excellent job in the software department. The Finnish company is now rolling out the latest Android 8.1 Oreo Beta update to its flagship smartphone, the Nokia 8 via the company's software beta program- Nokia Phones Beta Labs. So if you're already in the Beta Labs program, just log in with your ID on the website and request for the Android 8.1 Oreo OTA update. Otherwise, you have to register for the Beta Labs program first and request for the OTA update manually.
I am already a member of the Nokia Phone Beta Labs, so I went ahead and requested for the update immediately. In a matter of 60 seconds, I received an update notification on my Nokia 8. The Android 8.1 Oreo Beta update for the Nokia 8 comes with V4.82A build number and weighs 1553.9MB in size. The entire update process took around 15 minutes (depends on your internet connection).
Firstly, the update downloads from Nokia servers and then it installs in the background itself. All you need is to wait for 15 minutes and reboot the smartphone when the installation process completes in the background.
Talking about the features introduced by HMD Global with the Android 8.1 Oreo Beta update for the Nokia 8, the power menu is now revamped to match the Google Pixel 2 style menu, the Settings app is slightly tweaked too. And the update includes the latest January 2018 security patch fixes. For the unaware, the Nokia 8 boots stock Android, which is reason behind HMD Global delivering software updates this fast.
So, being a beta version, this update may bring in some bugs as well. Make sure to back up your important data before updating the smartphone. Also, in case if you want to roll back to the stable Android 8.0 Oreo update, you can do that anytime by heading over to the same Nokia Phones Beta Labs page and request a rollback OTA update. This works pretty similarly to the Google's Android Beta program. Back in November 2017, the Nokia 8 joined the list of few smartphones to run Android Oreo.
This is what every Android smartphone user wants from their smartphone brand. Faster software updates give a user the trust on that smartphone brand, and so far, HMD Global hasn't put a foot wrong in this aspect. The Finnish company has been rolling out software updates in quick succession The Nokia 8 is the first non-Google smartphone to receive 8.1 Oreo update, which explains the entire scenario.
