Back in September, Andy Rubin’s Essential announced the release of Android 8.0 for their smartphone PH-1. Today, the company released the first beta of Android 8.0 Oreo to the handset. The Android 8.0 beta is now available for the device from the company’s developer portal, allowing users to try out all the new enhancements and features coming to their device.

Android 8.0 Oreo will bring a range of new features to the new Essential Phone, if you own the new handset then you can now test out this new beta on your device.

The Oreo Beta is pre-release software that may contain software bugs. We welcome and encourage you to let us know about issues you experience via our online form; however, our support team will not be equipped to troubleshoot any software issues that you may encounter on the Oreo Beta. If you decide that you don’t want to continue on the Oreo Beta, you can download and revert back to the latest production software build from the Current Builds section of this site. As noted below, downloading the Oreo Beta from us will not affect your Essential Limited Warranty rights, but may affect the terms of any third party warranty you may have.

These files are for use only on your personal Essential Phone device and may not be disassembled, decompiled, reverse engineered, modified or redistributed by you or used in any way except as specifically set forth in the license terms that came with your device.

Installing Android 8.0 on the Essential PH-1 is not particularly easy, especially if you are not too familiar with ADB tools. Essential is offering a recovery build for the PH-1 as well, so if you find any critical bug on the Android 8.0 update or fail to install it properly, you can use that to go back to Android 7.0.

Essential is one of the few Android manufacturers who does not tweak much of the feel and look of pure Android. This is a good thing because you can experience Android for what it is, without any bloatware.

It is important to note that Google’s Pixel devices already have the Android 8.0 update. However, a majority of Android phones are yet to get the new features – including Samsung’s line of Galaxy phones. Although Samsung has also started testing Android 8.0 with Samsung Experience 9.0 (previously TouchWiz), it is still a month or so away from the official public rollout.