Google has updated the developer dashboards for August, and that means a new glimpse at which versions of Android are floating around out there. Like last month, Android 7.0 and 7.1 saw a small gain, and most other versions saw a small drop. That leaves Nougat on just 13.5% of devices today, and it's entirely possible Android O will arrive before another platform update does.

Android 7.0 is by far the largest version of Nougat, which is what's running on devices like the Galaxy S8. That's 12.3% of devices, and Android 7.1 is just 1.2%. The combined 13.5% share is dwarfed by Marshmallow and Lollipop, and even KitKat has a sizeable lead on Nougat. Here's a breakdown of the changes this month.

Another small gain leaves Nougat tracking behind the pace set by Marshmallow last year. Looking at previous data, Marshmallow was running on 15.2% of Android devices in August 2016—a 1.7% advantage over Nougat right now. That's especially embarrassing for Nougat when you consider it was launched about a month earlier in 2016 than Marshmallow was in 2015. Marshmallow was actually on 18.7% of devices after it had been out for the same amount of time (11 months).

Android O has reached the final developer preview, and we expect it to launch in the not too distant future. It'll probably take a month or two before it appears in the distribution numbers, but the momentum will begin shifting from Nougat to Android O in short order. If there's a silver lining, I suppose you could say that Android as a platform is good enough now that people can get along fine with last year's OS. Well, I don't know if that's exactly a silver lining. Maybe copper or aluminum? It's a metal lining of some manner, that's for sure.

Source: Android Developers