Yesterday, Google released the first preview version of Android N about two months before its annual I/O conference. With this announcement, Google also launched the new Android Beta Program for those who want to test out this developer release and any future releases.
Before this launch, those who wanted to test out new Android releases had to do so by downloading the factory images and flashing them on their devices. The whole process is not very complicated but can be challenging from those who don’t know their way around. This new program can hopefully make it easy and will probably get more people interested in testing new Android releases before they are available to the public.
For those who are thinking about signing up for this program, you will need one of the following devices, Nexus 6, Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus 9 (LTE), Pixel C or Nexus Player. The good thing about going the Beta program way is that you will be eligible to receive OTA updates as they become available. A statement from Google reads in part, “if you manually flashed Android N on your device by downloading the image from developer.android.com, you won’t receive OTA updates automatically.”
After you sign up for the Android Beta Program, you will be asked to select the device you want to enroll into the program with and after you choose it you will get a notification about the update on the device you selected. The update image is about 1GB in size so make sure you have enough space on your device for this.
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