Update 5/25/18: The Moto Z Play is also receiving the update.
The now Lenovo owned Motorola released the Moto Z smartphone back in the second half of 2016. That launched the start of a completely new lineup for the company’s flagship smartphones. The company had been using the Moto X line to showcase the best they could come up with, but this stopped in 2015 with the Moto X Play and continued on with last year’s release of the Moto X4. It’s been a while since the Moto Z received a big software update, but owners in the United States can now look forward to getting bumped up to Android 8.0 Oreo.
The Motorola Moto Z launched with Android 6.0 Marshmallow and was the first smartphone in the company’s roster that was released with support for Moto Mods. This came shortly after LG tried their hand at a modular flagship smartphone and many were speculating whether or not they would fail as quickly as LG did. However, the Moto Mods ecosystem has seemingly done well for the company as they’ve included the pogo pin setup on the back of a number of smartphones sold by the company.
The Moto Z was released in September with Android 6.0 Marshmallow but was updated to Android 7.0 Nougat the following year. A few months later the Moto Z started receiving its update to Android 7.1.1 Nougat and since then many have been waiting for the big (and final) update to Android 8.0 Oreo. We can now say the 2016 Motorola flagship is receiving this update and those who own the device can go in and manually check to see if theirs is eligible for the new update. Android P has also been ported to the Moto Z if you’re interested in doing a little work.
This Oreo update for the Moto Z adds in all of the features that Google has introduced in Android 8.0 Oreo, but the team has also put in some work to fix bugs and improve the stability of the smartphone. While it does come with some updated Android security patches, even that seems to be out of date already with this update bringing you up to March 2018. To check for the update, go to Settings > About phone > Software update > Check for updates.
Update: Moto Z Play
Four days later, the Moto Z Play is now recieving the same Android 8.0 Oreo update in the U.S. The Z Play update, however, includes the more recent April security patch.
Source: Motorola Update Notes Via: Reddit user najodleglejszy