The Android 16 preview cycle continues with the next beta officially set to arrive on Thursday, February 13. We’ve always known that Android 16 Beta 2 is coming this month, but Google providing an explicit teaser is somewhat unexpected.
This preview of the preview comes from the @AndroidDev X account on Wednesday afternoon: “Be on the lookout for Android 16 Beta 2 dropping tomorrow
In terms of user-facing changes, Beta 1 in January wasn’t a major update. It was a more sizable release for the intended audience of app developers:
- Ordered broadcast priority scope no longer global
- ART internal changes
- Support for 3-button navigation
- Migration or opt-out required for predictive back
- Fixed rate work scheduling optimization
- Adaptive layouts
- Health and fitness permissions
- Progress-centric notifications
- Supplemental descriptions
- Required form fields
- Camera night mode scene detection
- Generic ranging APIs
- Advanced Professional Video
- Vertical text
- Phone as microphone input for voice calls with LEA hearing aids
- Ambient volume controls for LEA hearing aids
It remains to be seen whether Beta 2 will change that, especially on the user interface front. Officially, it’s an “Incremental Beta-quality release.” Google providing an Android 16 Beta teaser is interesting, but that doesn’t translate to big features.
More broadly, it will be interesting to see what kind of presence Android 16 has at I/O 2025 on May 20. Google’s Android 16 timeline only goes up to “Beta 4” (in April), but does leave open the possibility of another “near-final build” in May. Historically, the developer conference has been used to reveal the major tentpoles, but the earlier preview cycle complicates that.
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