Android Nougat 7.1 on the way? Might launch with Nexus Marlin/Sailfish

The roll-out of Android 7.0 Nougat began on August 22, but the Internet is already buzzing about a possible Android 7.1 update that might be closer than we thought. Since Google has promised to adopt a more regular maintenance update cycle with Nougat, hardcore Android fans are now speculating that the 7.1 update might launch with the upcoming Marlin and Sailfish HTC-build Nexus phones.

The excitement was spurred by a screenshot showing Android version 7.1 listed in the crash and report filter section of Google's developer console. Given that Google has promised that the developer preview of Nougat Maintenance Release 1 (MR1) will be available sometime this fall, it wouldn't be too far fetched to assume that the final release would bump the version to 7.1, as MR1 is likely to bring quite a few things to the table.

The initial report on Reddit was followed by a tweet from David Ruddock of Android Police, claiming that the new Nexus phones will launch with Android 7.1, which is confirmed to be Nougat's MR1 release.

Looks like the new Nexus phones will launch with Android 7.1, which is now confirmed to be Nougat's MR1 release.

— David Ruddock (@RDR0b11) August 23, 2016

The user who started the Android 7.1 thread on Reddit also posted a screenshot of the statistics page for one of his apps, showing 115 installs on Android 7.1 and 4 installs on Android O. This was followed by another redditor, claiming to be working at XDA, posting a screenshot of website visits filtered by OS, showing 162 hits from Android 7.1 and 105 hits from devices running version 7.1.1. Those were complemented by a handful of visits from strange, and likely fake, versions of Android, such as 6.7.1 and 7.1.9. The latter, including Android O, are likely version numbers spoofed by editing the build.prop files of current Android builds. Versions 7.1 and 7.1.1, however, might be legitimate and under testing from Google.