Android 16 Beta 1 is out: here is what is new or changing

[harlan4096]

Google released the first beta version of this year's Android release, Android 16, today. With Android 16 nearing completion, it is a good time to look at the major changes of the new mobile operating system.

Tip: check out our list of the best Android emulators for Windows here.

How to get Android 16 Beta 1Android 16 Beta 1 is available to Google Pixel devices at the time of writing. It is necessary to enroll in the beta, which can be done on this page.
This requires signing in to a Google account to see the list of eligible devices.

Major features of Android 16

Google introduces several new features and changes in Android 16. Here is a list of the major ones:

• Advanced Professional Video support: the new codec "is designed to be used for professional level high quality video recording and post production".
  
• Adaptive Apps: the change disables the developer ability to restrict screen orientation and resizability on large screens to make sure that apps work seamlessly on devices with large displays.
  
• Live Updates: a new class of notifications that "help users monitor and quickly access important ongoing activities". Google suggests to use this only for "ride sharing, food delivery, and navigation use cases".
  
• Connectivity improvements: support for security features on devices that support Wi-Fi 6 802.11az that allows apps to "combine the higher accuracy, greater scalability, and dynamic scheduling of the protocol with security enhancements including AES-256-based encryption and protection against MITM attacks".
  
• Photo Picker: improvements that allow apps to better embed the tool and enable cloud media provider searching.
  
• Privacy Sandbox: latest version of the privacy feature is integrated into Android 16.
  
• Support for three-button navigation.
  
• Automatic night mode scene detection for cameras.
  
• Low-level support for rendering and measuring vertical text: this is designed for vertical writing language systems.
  
• Generic ranging API to determine the distance and angle between the Android device and another supported piece of hardware.
  
• Richer haptics: apps may define the "amplitude and frequency curves of a haptic effect while abstracting away differences between device capabilities".
  

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