The first preview for Android 16 is available to developers
Google is giving early testers a taste of next year’s Android 16 with a limited preview of the upcoming operating system update. It’s all part of the company’s plan to make Android updates available to users faster.
This is the first Android 16 developer preview, arriving three months ahead of schedule compared to last year’s similar version first preview of Android 15. By starting so early, the final version of Android 16 is expected to arrive in the second quarter of 2025, a period that is ahead of the typical full operating system release in the third quarter. (Android 15 launched in late October.)
“We are scheduling the major release a quarter earlier (Q2 instead of Q3 in previous years) to better align with the schedule of device launches in our ecosystem,” Matthew McCullough, vice president of product management for Android Developers. wrote in a blog post developer preview announcement.
Google launched its Pixel 9 series in August this year instead of October. As a result, Android 15 was notably absent from the phones when they went on sale. If Google plans to release the next Pixel lineup in the same time frame in 2025, it should overlap with the earlier Android 16 release.
Read more: Android 16 is launching earlier than usual. Google’s Android vice president explains why
This Android 16 developer preview has new features in the software version: the ability to be more selective in the photos an app can access and an early version of an app’s ability to read and write medical records with the user’s consent. Because this preview is more for app makers than app users, it gives developers time to tinker with the new features and integrate them into their own apps well before any Android 16 release.
This preview resets the pre-release schedule for Android: a minor software update in the last quarter of 2024, then a feature release in the first quarter of 2025, followed by the full release in the second quarter. In more detail, this amounts to an initial developer preview in November, followed by a second in December, and then beta releases for users enrolled in the Android beta program every month from January through April (or until May) , before a final release after that, the official said Android 16 overview page.
Google didn’t provide a definitive list of which phones will be compatible with Android 16, but did note that the Android 16 developer preview can be used with the company’s Pixel 6 phone series (including the Pixel 6a) and newer devices up to the Pixel 9. and Pixel 9 Pro Fold. This baseline of Pixel 6 phones is the same compatibility threshold as last year’s Android 15 developer beta.
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