Electronics Weekly
Its Preview 1 is now available for testing against apps. The system is planned to launch in Q2 of 2025 – see a timeline further below. Note this is for developers only – the Android 16 Developer Preview releases are early baseline builds for programmers only, not for early adopters.
The system will only be available on the following Pixel devices:
- Pixel 6, 6a and 6 Pro
- Pixel 7, 7a and 7 Pro
- Pixel Fold
- Pixel Tablet
- Pixel 8, 8a and 8 Pro
- Pixel 9, 9 Pro, 9 Pro XL, and 9 Pro Fold
To get started with Developer Preview 1 you will need to flash a system image to your device and update the Android tool set, compiling against the new SDK. Note, the company recommends you use the latest preview of the Android Studio Ladybug feature drop.
Android 16 Developer Preview
What will Android 16 feature? There will be, says Google, the latest version of the Privacy Sandbox on Android.
The preview also includes new APIs for photo picker, which provides a built-in way for users to grant your app access to selected images and videos from both local and cloud storage, instead of an entire media library.
The developer preview of Health Connect also contains an early version of APIs supporting health records. This allows apps to read and write medical records in FHIR format with explicit user consent.
More information will be found on the Google Android 16 developer site.
More devices
The search giant says the new system is the start of Android having more frequent SDK releases, including developer APIs, to “drive faster innovation in apps and devices”.
Google’s VP of Product Management, Android Development, Matthew McCullough writes:
“We’re planning the major release a quarter earlier (Q2 rather than Q3 in prior years) to better align with the schedule of device launches across our ecosystem, so more devices can get the major release of Android sooner. With the major release coming in Q2, you’ll need to do your annual compatibility testing a few months earlier than in previous years to make sure your apps are ready.”
“We plan to have another release in Q4 of 2025 which also will include new developer APIs. The Q2 major release will be the only release in 2025 to include planned behavior changes that could affect apps.”
The Q2 major release developer preview and beta programme will be available in a “few weeks”.
The release of Android 15 was completed in the autumn.
OS Framework
In the video below Google highlights Project Treble introducing separation between the Android OS Framework and device specific drivers.
This is to better enable OEMs, they say, to update devices with new OS versions without requiring driver updates. This should accelerate the rollout of Android updates, which have been notoriously slow in the past. For example, only a very small proportion of Android phones will be running Android 15 currently.
More recently, its Project Mainline packages core OS components, such as the Virtual Machine, into modules (Modular System Components) that can update through the Google Play Store. The idea is to help bypass device makers…
See also: Google plans $1 billion Hertfordshire data centre for AI
