Here’s how Google was able to move up Android 16’s release date

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xvd-pClss4M

• Google announced that the next major version of Android (Android 16) will be released in Q2 of 2025, which is several months earlier than usual.
• Google’s VP and GM of the Android Platform told me in an interview how the company was able to move the release forward by so much.
• The Android trunk stable project gave Google confidence that it could roll out updates faster and more frequently without breaking things.

The Android release schedule is undergoing major changes next year. Instead of rolling out the next major release of Android in August, September, or October of 2025, Google has announced that it will release Android 16 sometime in Q2 of 2025. That’s not all, though, as Google also announced that it will introduce a minor release with new developer APIs in Q4 of 2025. This is all part of Google’s plan to speed up Android’s release schedule so it better aligns with new device launches and brings new APIs to apps more quickly, but in order to accomplish this, Google had to make some major changes to the way it develops Android. Here’s why Google is moving up Android 16’s release date, as well as how it did it.

How Android’s current release schedule slows down new API rollouts

Although Google only pushes out a single major release of Android every year, it also pushes out three more minor updates known as quarterly platform releases (QPRs).




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