The first beta of Android 16 is now available for recent Pixel devices, and it’s the first publicly available version of Android 16 that can be installed via an over-the-air update. As usual, Google has announced the release with a blog post aimed at developers that highlights features that app makers should be aware of, but which also provides some hints of what users can expect.
But bloggers from sites like Android Police and 9to5Google have searched the new edition of Android to locate more user-facing changes. Here are some of the things that will be coming to Android phones and tablets when the next edition of Android launches in the second quarter of 2025 (likely in May or June).
One significant change should help folks with Android tablets or foldable phones with big screens. Google is starting to phase out the ability for app developers to restrict screen sizes or orientations for their apps. In other words if an app is made for smartphones and the developer doesn’t bother to modify it to play well with bigger screens, up until now they could effectively tell Android to show black bars on the sides of the app. That’s going away, which means that more apps will take up the full screen (whether they look good in full-screen mode or not).
Since this is a slow progression, Google will allow the developer to pull out this year. But an edition of Android Set that will be released in 2026 would arguably not allow developers to opt out. Therefore, apps targeting API 37 point (the next edition in 2026) will have to be adaptive apps that can be expanded to fill larger screens.
Google is joining this new notification feature to “help users monitor and temporarily access vital activities” by adding custom icons for the start, end, and existing progress of an activity, as well as segments and waypoints. .
These notifications demonstrate things like the prestige of food, grocery or package delivery, rideshare pickup, or navigation, among others. By adding this data to the notification, you will be able to see key data on the lock screen without unlocking the device or opening the window. notification drawer.
Apple Iphones have features called live activities.
Of course, this feature isn’t automatically applied. App developers will have to add support for Live Updates to their apps, so you may start to see this feature on some apps starting later this year, but I wouldn’t expect all apps to support it right away.
Android 16 adds control of recording, reading and publishing videos in the AVP codec, designed for video recording and post-production.
It’s a “perceptually lossless” codec that’s “close to raw video quality” while still being a compressed format to save space, while allowing you to decode and re-encode video multiple times “without severe visual quality degradation.”
Android 16 will have the APV 422-10 profile with 10 BITSARRAY YUV 422 Color sampling and flow rates of up to 2 Gbps.
The first Android 16 beta also brings a number of bug fixes as well as developer-focused features like one that makes it easier for apps to know when to switch a camera to night mode, one that adds “low-level support for rendering and measuring text vertically” for languages like Japanese, and wider support for predictive back system animations.
You can locate more main points in the Android developer blog.
Another thing to stay in the brain is that when Android 16 arrives in the second quarter, 2025, it will be the first of two significant updates this year. Google is also making plans for a “minor SDK release” for Q4 2025. This release is expected to have more updates, improvements, and bug fixes. But this shouldn’t have a primary effect on apps targeting Android 16.
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