Google announced Android P Beta on 8 May 2018, at Google I/O. It is the
second developer preview: AOSP tags it android-p-preview-2, and 9to5Google
called it “the second Developer Preview build of Android P”. It was the
first P build anyone could get over the air.
| Release date | 8 May 2018 |
| Devices | Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL; Sony Xperia XZ2, Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S, Nokia 7 Plus, Oppo R15 Pro, Vivo X21UD and X21, and Essential PH-1 |
| How to get it | Over the air through Android Beta on Pixel; partner builds from each manufacturer’s site |
| Platform stability | No; final APIs came with Beta 2 |
The partner phones were possible because of Project Treble, which Google
called “proof of what Treble can do”. The build added the user-facing
features Pie is known for: Adaptive Battery with four App Standby buckets,
the single-button system navigation, battery-based background restrictions
in Settings, and the text Magnifier. For developers it added Slices (with
the APIs in Android Jetpack), smart replies in notifications, new
TextClassifier entity types, the Dynamics Processing audio effect,
Android Protected Confirmation and StrongBox keys.
Two changes broke what Preview 1 had shipped. BiometricPrompt replaced
FingerprintDialog, with one USE_BIOMETRIC permission, and
FingerprintManager and USE_FINGERPRINT became deprecated. Non-SDK
interfaces that were not exempted now threw exceptions instead of showing a
toast, and StrictMode gained detectNonSdkApiUsage() to find them.