Google rolling out Android 16 Beta 1 for Pixel

Abner Li | Jan 23 2025 - 11:00 am PT

The first beta of the next major version of Google’s mobile OS is launching today with Android 16 Beta 1 rolling out to Pixel devices. This release is now available.

Android 16 Beta 1 is the “initial beta-quality release” and the first this cycle to be available as an over-the-air update for those enrolled in the Android Beta Program.

Here’s everything new in Android 16 Beta 1 [Gallery]

Android 16 introduces Live Updates as a “new class of notifications that help users monitor and quickly access important ongoing activities,” like ride sharing, food delivery, and navigation.

The new ProgressStyle notification template provides a consistent user experience for Live Updates, helping you build for these progress-centric user journeys: rideshare, delivery, and navigation. It includes support for custom icons for the start, end, and current progress tracking, segments and points for user journey states, milestones, and more.

Meanwhile, Google is “phasing out the ability for apps to restrict screen orientation and resizability on large screens,” or letterboxing. This only applies to apps and not games.

On screens larger than 600dp wide, apps that target API level 36 will have app windows that resize; you should check your apps to ensure your existing UIs scale seamlessly, working well across portrait and landscape aspect ratios. We’re providing frameworks, tooling, and libraries to help.

Android 16 (2025): Changes apply to large screens (600dp in width) for apps targeting API level 36 (developers can opt-out).
Android release in 2026: Changes apply to large screens for apps targeting API level 37 (no opt-out).

Android 16 adds support for the Advanced Professional Video (APV) codec, specifically the APV 422-10 Profile (YUV 422 color sampling along with 10-bit encoding and for target bitrates of up to 2Gbps). Meant for high-quality video recording and post production, the standard allows for:

Perceptually lossless video quality (close to raw video quality)
Low complexity and high throughput intra-frame-only coding (without pixel domain prediction) to better support editing workflows
Support for high bit-rate range up to a few Gbps for 2K, 4K and 8K resolution content, enabled by a lightweight entropy coding scheme
Frame tiling for immersive content and for enabling parallel encoding and decoding
Support for various chroma sampling formats and bit-depths
Support for multiple decoding and re-encoding without severe visual quality degradation
Support multi-view video and auxiliary video like depth, alpha, and preview
Support for HDR10/10+ and user-defined metadata

Generic Ranging APIs (RangingManager) will use BLE channel sounding, BLE RSSI-based ranging, Ultra-Wideband, and WiFi round trip time to “determine the distance and angle on supported hardware between the local device and a remote device.”

Google is continuing to encourage predictive back adoption by enabling it by default for apps that target/run on Android 16, while 3-button navigation is now supported. When you long-press the back button, a predictive back animation/preview is initiated.

This behavior applies across all areas of the system that support predictive back animations, including the system animations (back-to-home, cross-task, and cross-activity).

Other notable additions include:

“To help your app know when to switch to and from a night mode camera session, Android 16 adds EXTENSION_NIGHT_MODE_INDICATOR.”
“Android 16 adds low-level support for rendering and measuring text vertically to provide foundational vertical writing support for library developers.”
“Android 16 adds setFieldRequired to AccessibilityNodeInfo so apps can tell an accessibility service that input to a form field is required.”
“Samsung just launched new Gemini Extensions on the S25 series, demonstrating new ways Android apps can integrate with the power of Gemini. We’re working to make this functionality available to more apps with more OEMs on more devices across more form factors.”

You can leave feedback with the Android Beta Feedback app on Pixel devices. Access it from the drawer or via Quick Settings to file bugs in the Google issue tracker. There’s also the Android Beta community on Reddit.

“If you are currently on Android 16 Developer Preview 2 or are already in the Android Beta program, you will be offered an over-the-air update to Beta 1.”
“If you are in the Android 15 QPR2 Beta and would like to get the final stable release of QPR2 and exit the Beta program, you need to ignore the over-the-air update to Android 16 Beta 1 and wait for the release of QPR2.”

Android 16 Beta 1 (BP22.250103.008) system images with the January 2025 security patch are available for the Pixel 6, Pixel 6 Pro, Pixel 6a, Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro, Pixel 7a, Pixel Tablet, Pixel Fold, Pixel 8, Pixel 8 Pro, Pixel 8a, Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro XL, and Pixel Pro Fold, as well as the Android Emulator.