Android 16

Google’s Sameer Samat on Android 16’s early release and ‘doing more’ to show what’s new

Ben Schoon | Mar 5 2025 - 7:15 am PT

Google is releasing Android 16 far earlier than its typical schedule and, apparently, things are going well. In an interview this week, Google’s President of the Android Ecosystem, Sameer Samat, confirmed that Android 16 is on track for a June release, and added that Google wants to do more to actually show what’s new in the update.

Top comment by Tiuri Elvander

Liked by 3 people

Completely missing the point, Android doesn't have fans all over the world that want to understand it. It has fans all over the world that want the new features that so far are coming almost exclusively to the US. In the last year, the number of people who are complaining about paying premium prices while getting fewer features than people in the US, has increased exponentially. There's a website created by users to show which features are available where because Google continues to hide this information in tiny footnotes or even forgets to include it.

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Speaking to Android Police at MWC 2025, Sameer Samat discussed the current state of Android 16’s development, saying that the “bug count” is where he wants it to be and that everything is on track for a self-imposed June deadline. Google’s previously-announced schedule placed the fourth and “near-final” beta release in April. As of now, Google has moved to “Trunk Stable” development, meaning that all teams are currently contributing to the same branch rather than merging things towards the “end.” In years past, that merge wouldn’t take place until June, so moving to this new model allows Google to speed things up and catch bugs faster.

Outside of the timeline, Samat explains that Google will “do more” to “highlight” what’s new in its latest release, and how Android 16 – and yearly OS versions in general – remain important despite Google’s moves to make Android updates faster.

This year, we will do more to highlight what is in the release. We know we have many fans around the world who want to understand more of the depth of it.

There are also a lot of users that want functionality faster, and they want us to update more regularly. We have been modularizing and componentizing Android so that we can do that. There are some fundamental changes which can only happen with an operating system release, but there are other things where we’ve engineered Android such that a component can update more regularly.

When we have new capabilities, the decision is always between do we hold this for an operating system release, or do we give it to people on a more quarterly cadence with Android drops. We’ve gotten a great response to Android drops because it feels like your phone is always getting better.

Google is set to release Android 16, as mentioned, towards June. Android 16 Beta 2.1 was released in late February, but the beta has so far been lacking any major new feature additions.

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