Android 8.1 Oreo Slated for Release in December, Supports Pixel 2’s Hidden Chip

Promising to bring various enhancements to the Oreo platform, the Android 8.1 update will finally active the hidden imaging chip of Google’s Pixel 2 mobile phone. It will also introduce optimizations to Android Go on devices with at least 1GB of RAM, as well as an all-new Neural Networks API to accelerate on-device machine intelligence. With the Android 8.1 Oreo Final Developer Preview installed on a Pixel 2 device, the Pixel Visual Core chip can be enabled via a new developer option. Once activated, it will allow photography apps using the official Android Camera API to capture HDR+ photos.