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It wasn’t a joke, Google really is changing Android’s release timeframe. The first developer preview of a new version used to come out around February-March. Not anymore. The first developer preview of Android 16 is out now, way ahead of the previous schedule.
Google is reiterating that Android 16 will come out in the second quarter of next year (April to June), followed by a minor new Android release in the fourth quarter (October to December), which we assume will be dubbed Android 16.1 or 16.5 or something similar. This one will “pick up feature updates, optimizations, and bug fixes” but “will not include any app-impacting behavior changes”.
And once again the company says the purpose of these changes is “to better align with the schedule of device launches” across the Android ecosystem, “so more devices can get the major release of Android sooner”.
The first developer preview includes new APIs that make the photo picker feel like a more integrated part of the app. There are APIs supporting health records, allowing apps to read and write medical records in FHIR format with explicit user consent. There’s also a new version of the Privacy Sandbox.
Expect another developer preview next month, followed by the first beta in January, a second beta in February, then a third one in late March which will deliver “platform stability” (when the final SDK/NDK APIs will be delivered along with final internal APIs and app-facing system behaviors). There is one more beta after that in April, followed by the final release at some point in Q2, as the image above clearly shows.
As the name implies, developer previews are only intended for app developers to run. From the first beta onwards, you can join in the fun too by enrolling your Pixel into the Android Beta program.