OnePlus 6 Android P Beta Confirmed Officially Ahead of May 16 Launch

OnePlus 6 is all set for its global launch on May 16 and is arriving in India on May 17. And just days ahead of the OnePlus 6 formal debut, the company has announced the the availability of Android P Beta on the smartphone. Android P was announced as the Android Oreo successor a couple of months ago with the release of Developer Preview 1, and on Tuesday, the next milestone, Android P Beta (aka Developer Preview 2), was launched at Google I/O 2018. The OnePlus 6 Android P Beta will become available to download on May 16, the company has said.

Known for fast software updates, OnePlus said that it is part of the earliest group of smartphone manufacturers working closely with Google to release their latest updates and features. It claimed that the OnePlus 5 and 5T were some of the first smartphones to receive Android Oreo updates and the company is focusing on pushing out Android security patch updates within two months of release as well. OnePlus 6 will, however, not come preloaded with Android P Beta - instead, it will have Android Oreo pre-installed and users will have the option to flash the Android P Beta, considering it's a developer preview that will likely have bugs. We can expect the stable Android P build to be rolled out to the OnePlus 6 sometime after Google makes it official in Q3 2018.

OnePlus claims that over 135,000 community members have signed up to review the OnePlus 6 via The Lab program. Meanwhile, OnePlus 6 buyers interested in trying the latest Android release can visit the company's dedicated webpage.

Coming to Android P, it is this year's big update for the platform, and while we were first introduced to it in March, Google at its annual developer conference elaborated on what we already knew and announced some more goodies that it did not show off earlier. The new features in Android P include a notch and multi-camera support, improved notification panel, design changes, new security features, and more. Earlier, Google had published a timeline showcasing the release track for Android P. The next Developer Preview 3 with final APIs is expected to be announced in June and the final release may happen Q3 this year.

To recall the OnePlus 6 specifications - as per rumours and confirmations from the company - the smartphone is expected to sport a 19:9 display with a notch on top. It will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC, coupled with up to 8GB of RAM and up to 256GB of inbuilt storage, all confirmed by the company. As per leaks, the smartphone is said to have a vertical dual rear camera setup, a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor, and wireless charging support (considering glass back confirmed) on the handset. A 3.5mm headphone jack has also been confirmed, apart from a display notch.

The OnePlus 6 could run OxygenOS on top of the latest Android version. The battery capacity has not yet been revealed yet, but the handset it expected to have support for its proprietary Dash Charge feature, and the confirmation of a glass back indicates it will also support wireless charging.

Is OnePlus 6 an iPhone X killer at half the price? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below.