Google Releases Android O Developer Preview 4 With An Octopus Easter Egg

Google has release the Developer Preview 4 for Android O and has teased that the new software is “coming soon.” The new Developer Preview 4 is believed to be the final one before the official release of the software, and it includes an easter egg that’s possibly hinting at Android O’s name.

The Developer Preview 4 for Android O includes under-the-hood features which developers can test and check out. The new preview doesn’t offer anything new, and it mostly improves upon the features that were first made available in Developer Preview 3, which arrived last month.

Android O comes with some user interface changes, app icons for notifications, picture-in-picture video playback and a streamlined settings menu. The new version of Android also comes with a new battery-saving feature called Background Execution Limits. This prohibits apps from draining a device’s battery by limiting background performance.

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Developer Preview 4 appears to be the most stable version of Android O so far, and it is likely the candidate for final release. This simply means that this is the near-final version of Android O.

“As we put the finishing touches on the Android O platform, today we're rolling out Developer Preview 4 to help you make sure your apps are ready,” Google said on its Android Developers Blog. “This is the final preview before we launch the official Android O platform to consumers later this summer. Take this opportunity to wrap up your testing and publish your updates soon, to give users a smooth transition to Android O.”

The most interesting about the Developer Preview 4 for Android O is it comes with a new easter egg. The Neko Collector game from Android 7.0 Nougat, which tasks users to hunt down cats, has now been replaced with a floating octopus.

This can be access by going to the device’s settings and repeatedly tapping the Android version several times. This will bring up the “O” logo. Users will simply tap the logo repeatedly, then long-press it. This will open up a blue page showing a floating octopus, as shown by 9To5Google.

Users can interact with the octopus by dragging it around, but there doesn’t appear to be any sort of mini game. The presence of this easter egg has been subject to speculations regarding Android O’s final name.

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Android O has been confirmed by Google as version 8.0 of the Android mobile operating system. An octopus has eight legs. This has led many to believe that Android O might be called Android 8.0 Octopus.

Although that makes a lot of sense, this would completely deviate from Google’s naming scheme of desserts. It’s possible that Google will simply be adopting a new naming scheme starting with Android O.

Another possibility here is that the cartoon octopus is simply an easter egg for Android 8.0. The final name could still be a dessert of some kind, while the octopus is just a mascot. The popular theory right now is that it might be called Android 8.0 Oreo when it’s finally released to the public.