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Three days in, life with the Android P beta has been mostly painless
The first public preview of Android P is finally here, and as you might have guessed from the jam-packed keynote, there's a lot going on in this new build. As Google tells it, Android P is centered around intelligence, simplicity and what the company refers to as "digital well-being." All together, those themes represent the most compelling case we've heard for Android in years. This is beta software, though, so you probably shouldn't install this build with the intent of using it as your daily driver. Not everything works the way it's supposed to, and reverting to good ol' Android Oreo requires you to flash a factory image onto your phone. That said, since there's a pretty good chance you're probably going to take the plunge anyway, I'm pleased to report that life with Android P has been more pleasant than painful.
Here’s what you won’t find in the Android P beta
Developers and enthusiasts have had access to a very early version of Android P for a while now, but Google has made it more easily accessible to the brave with the launch of its public Android P Beta. At this point, you can get it up and running on 11 devices, but a considerable chunk of the features Google talked up during its keynote aren't actually there yet. Bummer. The broad strokes are well understood at this point, but (thankfully) we got to play with a slightly more feature-complete version of Android P inside Google's sandbox demo space. We'll continue to play with the publicly available Android P Beta, so expect a deeper dive soon, but one thing is clear after playing with a more-complete version: Android P is only going to get more capable in time.
