It wasn’t a joke, Google is really changing Android’s release timing. The first developer preview of a new version appeared around February-March. Not anymore. The first developer preview of Android 16 is now out, well ahead of the previous schedule.
Google repeats that Android 16 will be released in the second quarter of next year (April to June), followed by a small new Android release in the fourth quarter (October to December), which we assume will be called Android 16.1 or 16.5 or something similar. This will “pick up feature updates, optimizations and bug fixes”, but “will not include behavioral changes that impact the app”.
And once again, the company says the goal of these changes is “to better align with the schedule of device launches” in the Android ecosystem, “so more devices can get Android’s major release 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 that support medical records, allowing apps to read and write medical records in FHIR format with explicit user permission. There is 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, and then a third at the end of March, which will deliver “platform stability” (when the final SDK/NDK APIs will ship along with the latest internal APIs and app-centric system behavior). This will be followed by another beta in April, followed by the final release sometime in the second quarter, as the image above clearly shows.
As the name implies, developer previews are for app developers only. Starting with the first beta, you can also participate by enrolling your Pixel in the Android Beta Program.