It's been nearly two months since Samsung kicked off the official Galaxy S8 beta program for Android Oreo. The Korean manufacturer recently announced that the beta is ending on January 15, so it's time to move on to the official build. Today, an official (non-beta) build of Oreo for the S8 has leaked.
With beta testing coming to a close, it's quite likely we will see the stable Oreo update roll out in late January. Yesterday, a Reddit user posted a link to an official Oreo OTA build for the Galaxy S8. It is very important to note that this leaked build is only for the Snapdragon variants of the S8.
The build can be sideloaded, but your device must be on the Nougat build ending in BQL1 to do so. If your S8 or S8+ is not currently on BQL1, you can use Samsung's Odin tool to flash this build. After your device is running on BQL1, you can sideload build CRA1 in recovery, which is the official Oreo update.
Below, we'll go over what's changed between the last beta and today's leaked official build. If you need to get yourself up to speed on all the changes coming in Android Oreo for the Galaxy S8 and S8+, make sure to check out our full rundown of the features that were added in the early beta builds.
Altered Boot Screen
After five beta updates, there aren't a ton of new features or changes in the new stable build. One small change to note upon booting up is the new "Powered by Android" text on the boot screen. The text is a bit bolder than before, but nothing else has changed with the logo.
Old boot screen (left) vs new boot screen (right).
Dolby Atmos Support
By far the biggest change in the official build, Samsung brings Dolby Atmos support to the Galaxy S8 series. Dolby Atmos can be found in the Quick Setting tiles now. The software fine-tunes EQ settings and offers surround emulation when the user is wearing headphones. There are a total of four different presets to choose from – Auto, Movie, Music, and Voice.
Unfortunately, there seems to be a bug with toggling Atmos on and off. Once the feature is toggled on in Quick Settings, it cannot be turned off. Even worse, after our initial testing, it appears that Dolby Atmos makes no difference whatsoever in sound quality.
It's possible that Samsung didn't mean for this feature to be available in the final Oreo build. Users on XDA are speculating that it's something Samsung intended to add to TouchWiz/Samsung Experience with the release of the Galaxy S9. We're guessing the Atmos toggle will be completely absent once this final Oreo build releases to the public.
Lock Screen Adaptive Color Now the Default
We wrote a detailed piece about Samsung's new Adaptive Color feature in Android Oreo. The feature simply matches your lock-screen clock with the color of your wallpaper. No doubt, this is a simple feature but also a very nice touch.
Galaxy S8 Official Build.
Note 8 Beta Build.
Adaptive Color Preview.
Galaxy S8 Official Build.
Note 8 Beta Build.
Adaptive Color Preview.
In this new Oreo build, Adaptive Color is now enabled by default for the lock screen clock. On previous beta builds, the color-matching was an optional toggle in the Settings menu. The Adaptive Color option can still be toggled off, but this option now appears only on the lock screen preview screen. This is a logical step, as users can now see how the adaptive color matching will look when applying a new wallpaper.
Overall, the changes in this stable build are not groundbreaking by any means. The Dolby Atmos support would be a great feature, but it's obviously not quite ready. The most noteworthy thing about this leaked build is how very close we are to the official OTA rolling out. Let us know your experience if you decide to flash the update. If sideloading isn't your thing, keep an eye out for the stable release in the next few weeks!
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Cover image and screenshots by Jeff Springer/Gadget Hacks
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