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Google is giving early testers a glimpse at 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 get Android updates out faster to users.
This is the first Android 16 developer preview, arriving three months ahead of schedule compared with last year’s similar first preview of Android 15. Starting this early means the final version of Android 16 is expected to be released in the second quarter of 2025, a window that would be ahead of the operating system’s typical full release in the third quarter. (Android 15 launched in late October.)
“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,” Android developer vice president of product management Matthew McCullough wrote in a blog post announcing the developer preview.
Google launched its Pixel 9 series in August this year rather than in 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 Android 16’s earlier drop.
Read more: Android 16 Will Launch Earlier Than Usual. Google’s Android VP Explains Why
This Android 16 developer preview has new features in its software release: the capability to be more selective in which photos an app has access to and an early version of an app’s ability to read and write medical records with user consent. As this preview is more for app makers than app users, it gives developers time to tinker with and integrate the new features into their own apps well-before an eventual Android 16 release.
This preview resets the Android pre-release schedule to be 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. More granularly, this breaks down to this first developer preview in November followed by a second in December, then beta releases for users enrolled in the Android Beta program every month from January through April (or into May) before a final release thereafter, according to the official Android 16 overview page.
Google did not give a final 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 series of phones (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 threshold of compatibility as last year’s Android 15 developer beta.
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