Google has announced the release of the first developer preview of Android 16. It is currently aimed at developers.
The tech giant believes that the early release will help OEMs speed up in delivering the latest major updates for phones released in 2025 and It will better align with the launch schedules of new devices.
As per the Android Developers blog post, Google plans to have another release in Q4 of 2025 which also will include new developer APIs. The Q2 major release will be the only release in 2025 to include planned behavior changes that could affect apps.
The developer preview will continue until December, after which Android 16 will transition to the beta phase from January to April, before reaching its stable release.
The developer preview of Android 16 comes with some key features, which include a photo picker, health records API, and privacy sandbox.
According to the blog post, the photo picker provides a safe, built-in way for users to grant their app access to selected images and videos from both local and cloud storage, instead of their entire media library.
The second feature is Health Connect, which allows apps to read and write medical records in FHIR format. However, it requires explicit user consent.
Another feature is the Privacy Sandbox, which aims to improve privacy features and protect the data of users.
