The final preview of Android 8.1 is available
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What's happening, Bryan Tong here, and welcome to Googlicious for everything Google you can think of.
Now the Googs has released the final developer preview of Android 8.1, and you can get it now if you're enrolled in the Android Beta Developer Program It's a free sign up.
Now 8.1's biggest improvement is finally enabling the Pixel Visual Core.
Google's first custom designed co-processor for image processing and machine learning.
Now any apps using the Android camera API will now be able to capture HDR+ shots with the update.
The final build also includes improvements to Sue the Neural Networks API for fast on device machine learning and other enhancements and tweaks.
Now the general consumer release for 8.1 is expected sometime in December.
Google also recently rolled out a feature that Pixel phones called Smart Battery, that will give users better estimates on what to expect from their battery through out the day.
With smart battery, Pixel phones learn from your overall usage habits.
Instead of giving you an estimate based on how you used your phone for about the last hour.
I know it's a subtle change, but really handy with a chart that will even show you how you will most likely use your phone throughout the day.
And the last thing i wanna hear about is another Pixel 2 issue.
According to reports in forum posts, some Pixel 2 and 2 XL owners have been noticing their phones are randomly rebooting and it appears to be linked to the LTE modem.
Some have found that switching to 3G alleviates the problem which isn't ideal.But Android Police reports the modem is causing a kernel panic when the device is in LTE mode, but it's not clear exactly what triggers it.
Now even if the early builds of Android point one don't entirely solve it, we're just gonna have to wait for a real fix if this is effecting you.
And the Razor phone we know about this.one.
It's been out for over a week now and it's the fruits of Razor's acquisition of next bit.
Now it's another solid Android phone but, you gotta have at least one feature that makes it stand out.
For Razor, it's a screen.
And if you never heard a 120 hertz refresh rate on a phone, It's like butter and you'll be begging for it if you don't already have the new Razr phone.
It also brings duel speaker designs with Dolby atmos compatibility for a legit sounding phone.
There's no water protection here and it also involves the trend of removing a headphone jack.
Razer's CEO said it wasn't an easy decision, but the reason for the move was to fit an extra 500 milliampere hours of battery juice and improve the thermals for performance.
They also include a headphone jack adaptor That has a 24 bit digital audio converter for improved audio performance and I kind of like the fact that we're getting some real transparency here.
The phone benefited from this move at least that's what they're telling us unlike a certain fruit company that said they took it away because it took courage.
The RAZR phone also even went through jerry rig everything's bend test and this metal clad phone fared pretty well.
It survived and was still working, which is more than we can say about the previous Nextbit Robin, that, look, it pretty much snapped like a twig.
Dude, does he work out?
And Android Authority reports a number of its readers have been sent a survey from Google asking about a potential YouTube edition smartphone, with exclusive features.
This doesn't mean they're actually doing it, Well one of the features asked about was a live log streaming.
That would allow you to live stream while the phone was locked.
And another feature called View Twist, which would allow you to rotate the phone in landscape and instantly access videos you might want to watch.
A lo-res image was included with this survey That showed a small bezzle in red buttons around a white frame with a 6 inch display.
2.2 gigahertz processor dual cameras and a rear fingerprint sensor.
Again this project could be dead already but Google is exploring its options and doing it Very publicly.
And we wrap things up with the fun pan from the Google discovery.
Back in 2013 that has now been approved.
Google has been granted a pan for a motorized laptop hinge that can auto align with a users.
Face.
Now, we could see something like this come to a future pixel book.
Maybe.
It's a fun idea where there would need to be an area on the outside of the computer to detect the presence of a person when it's touched.
And then, once it did that, it would be able to open up.
But, also continuously adjust the angle and position of the lid to keep it aligned with the user's face, for optimum viewing position.
Like I wouldn't count on a motorized hinge any time soon.
But if they were able to get self-lacing shoes last year, this is nothing compared to that.
All right, that's it for this week, you can email me at googlicious@cnet.com or Tweet me @briantong.
Thanks for watching, we'll catch you all next time for some more of that Googlicious.
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