Google gave a new life to its Android One program last year with products such as Xiaomi Mi A1 smartphone, which also happens to be my main phone. One of the main benefits of getting an Android One smartphone is the promise to get regular security updates, as well as upgrades to the latest version of Android for at least 2 years after launch.
I’ve been keeping track of updated in my long term review of Xiaomi Mi A1, and since I received it in mid-October, I got 6 security updates, or about two such update per month. However, Xiaomi also promised Android 8.0 Oreo update by the end of the year (2017), and as the year drew to a close I was not confident the company would fulfill this promise.
But around mid-afternoon on December 31st, I received a notification about “Android Update (Oreo)”, so I went there, and it just mentioned a December 2017 security update, but I went ahead and download the 1GB+ update, and within 30 minutes, the phone was updated.
The update went rather smoothly, as it kept all my settings and apps, but I did lose the Phone app icon that is supposed to be on the bottom left corner. I was easy enough to restore. I still had to check whether I got Android 8.0, although the notification dot on the Play Store icon gave a clue. I still went to “About phone”, and indeed the Android version was now 8.0.0, with Linux kernel updated to 3.18.66 from 3.18.31 in Android 7.1.2. However, the company has yet to release the kernel source code. I’m now expecting Android 9.0 update by the end of the year, or early next year.
Android 8.0.0 fixed at least one thing in my case, as Google app had become extremely sluggish in Android 7.1, often leading to “app not responding” pop-ups, but luckily now everything is back to normal.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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the phone app was removed because the app itself was changed with the one available in playstore, more feature rich and updateable indipendently…
@mrshark
OK, that explains it, and is probably a good thing over the long term, but I think it will confuse many people who upgrade from Android 7.1 to Android 8.0.
Linux kernel source code for Xiaomi Mi A1 (Android Oreo) : https://github.com/MiCode/Xiaomi_Kernel_OpenSource/tree/tissot-o-oss