Beta Program | Mobiles365

Nextbit Robin gets early taste of Nougat with sanctioned help from Paranoid Android

Posted on November 23, 2016 by Adrian Diaconescu

While you can still probably count the number of non-Nexus Android device models officially updated to Nougat, at least in one country or on one carrier, on the fingers of one hand, there are many more from several manufacturers treated to public beta builds.

Ambitious startup Nextbit today follows Samsung, Sony or Huawei’s suit with an experimental 7.0 rollout of its own for pre-release Robin software testers. The unique and surprising thing about the cloud-first phone’s beta community program is that Nextbit’s devs have actually partnered with the Paranoid Android team to “speed things along.”

Second only to CyanogenMod, PA is a hugely popular custom Android ROM with an estimated 200K+ users as of last year. This is likely the first time an OEM shows such openness to this particular open-source initiative, apparently being “there every step of the way” to help shape up and test its early N builds.

What courageous and cooperative Nextbit Robin owners will be getting over-the-air starting today is thus a joint effort to stabilize and improve the Nougat experience as quickly as possible without modifying too many stock features.

A “few bugs and kinks” obviously still “need to be worked out”, but otherwise, Nextbit and Paranoid Android hope your introductory beta version of the next software release will only make your “day-to-day experience” better, requiring minimal additional efforts and time before a proper, wide-scale launch takes place.

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Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge will start Nougat Beta Programme this week, end tests ‘mid of December’

Posted on November 7, 2016 by Adrian Diaconescu

It looks like things are very rapidly advancing on the Android 7.0 Nougat update front for recent Samsung Galaxy flagship phones, as the Korean tech giant desperately needs something positive to bump the Note 7 fiasco off the spotlight.

Mere days after first hearing of the possibility to sign up for public beta testing of fresh software on British shores, we’ve just received confirmation both the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge will kick off said pre-release experiments on Wednesday, November 11.

The plan is to conclude the “Galaxy Beta Programme” around the “mid of December” at the moment, although “the end date may be subject to changes based on results of feedback.” The timeline of the eventual wide-scale rollout obviously depends immensely on how these tentative goodie packs are evaluated by those of you who will be open to “experience new features and the latest UX based on Android 7.0 Nougat first.”

Keep in mind that not everyone wanting in will be selected to sample the OS makeover, though it might help to register as soon as possible by using the dedicated form in the “Galaxy Beta Programme” application available as a free download through the Galaxy Apps service.

Don’t forget to back up your data once the tests are underway, and note that only unlocked standard versions of the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge in the UK are for the time being included in the pre-release examination.

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Samsung seemingly starts accepting Nougat beta registrations for UK Galaxy S7 Edge

Posted on November 4, 2016 by Adrian Diaconescu

The far-reaching negative implications of the premature Galaxy Note 7 discontinuation could also extend to the Android 7.0 update process and timeline of previous Samsung flagships, since the company most likely planned to bring OTA Nougat to the ill-fated phablet first.

Now that it’s no longer an option, the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge have to score official build N goodies pronto, but not before the UI tweaks and performance enhancements are thoroughly tested, including publicly.

The open beta program trend will apparently carry on, this time beginning on British shores rather than the Korean tech giant’s homeland. Owners of the S7 Edge, and probably, the standard S7 too, can already sign up to lend a hand quashing bugs, directly sending feedback and “experience about performance, stability and usability”, while accepting the inherent risks of encountering “unexpected errors or malfunction.”

Of course, not everyone will be granted early access to Android Nougat treats, and even if you do get in, there’s no word on when you might expect the beta updates to arrive. Last year, Samsung needed around two months to go from invitations of this sort to fully polished Marshmallow package deliveries for S6 and S6 Edge users worldwide, so maybe, just maybe, a 7.0 large-scale rollout can now be pulled off ahead of Christmas.

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Sony Xperia Beta Program draws to a close, at least for the time being

Posted on July 15, 2016 by Adrian Diaconescu

Well, it was fun while it lasted, and in all fairness, it probably lasted longer than many expected. After all, the goal was to get Xperia Z2, Z3 and Z3 Compact users to try out pre-release Marshmallow goodies, and help shape them up before they could hit the masses, which already went down way back in April.As promised, the Sony Xperia Beta ...

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