Android 16 Will Launch Earlier Than Usual. Google's Android VP Explains Why
It's part of an effort to roll out new features faster and prepare Android for a future wave of AI-powered apps, Google's Seang Chau tells CNET.
A statue of the Android mascot outside of Google's booth at CES 2024
Google is making a big change to the way it releases Android updates next year. The next version of Android, presumably called Android 16, will be available to software developers and device-makers in the second quarter of 2025 instead of the third, which should enable app creators and phone companies to prepare their products for the new software more quickly.
That's a big deal for a few reasons, the most significant being that Android 16 will likely come to your phone faster than this year's Android 15, which notably launched after Google's Pixel 9 series instead of alongside them as usual. Rollout timing always varies based on the device-maker, but part of why Google is moving up Android's major release to the second quarter is because it more closely lines up with new device launches.
However, in a big-picture sense, the change could help facilitate a new wave of apps with more AI integration, considering developers will get access to Google's latest machine learning and AI resources even sooner.
"We're in a once-in-a-generation moment to completely reimagine what our smartphones can do and how we interact with them," Google's Seang Chau, who took on the role of vice president and general manager of the Android Platform earlier this year, said in an interview with CNET. "It's a really exciting time for smartphones, and we've been putting a lot of thought into what we want to do next with them."
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In addition to moving up the major release, Google will roll out a minor update in the fourth quarter of 2025 with feature updates, optimizations and bug fixes. It's a notable switch from Google's usual release timeline, but it's just one of several changes the company has made to the way it distributes Android updates in an effort to add features more frequently.
Since Android is open source, it must be capable of running on all sorts of devices made by different companies with varying specifications, meaning rolling out a new software version all at once is a challenge, if not impossible. Google's Project Treble from roughly seven years ago, which makes it easier for chipmakers to access parts of the code necessary for prerelease optimizations, was one such example of an effort to accelerate the update process. In another sign that the days of one big annual yearly update are behind us, Google has also made a habit of launching Pixel updates quarterly for its own line of smartphones.
The common thread between all of these changes, including Google's new approach of launching Android in two waves, is to get new Android features out faster. That ambition is more important than ever now that generative AI models are playing a larger role in smartphone software. Google is making a bid to ensure Android (and the apps that run on it) can keep up with the fast pace of generative AI, all while maintaining reliable performance.
"Things are moving quite fast in the AI world right now," Chau said. "So we want to make sure that we get those developer [application programming interfaces], especially around machine learning and AI, available to our developers so they can build these capabilities faster and get them out to our users faster."
Releasing Android's software development kit earlier also allows Google to gather feedback from app creators sooner so that it can fine-tune its models to work for the specific use cases that developers are seeking. That could allow apps to leverage generative AI in new ways that makes their services more useful. Chau cites one potential example of a game developer using AI to generate character dialogue rather than scripting conversations. Another example could entail using AI for content moderation.
Chau thinks app developers are critical in finding new use cases for generative AI that extend beyond the features companies like Google, Samsung and Apple have already built for phones, such as tools for rewriting and summarizing text.
And he's far from being the only one thinking about the future of apps. Qualcomm, which develops the chips that power Android devices from companies like Samsung, Motorola and OnePlus, shared a similar vision during its Snapdragon Summit last week. During the keynote, Qualcomm highlighted a concept that involved a shopping app integrating with a banking app so that you could just tell the digital storefront that you'd like to use your debit card for the purchase.
"Those are the kind of things that we know there's some use for," Chau said, referring to existing AI tools like text summarizations. "But there are probably a bunch of other things that we haven't thought of that developers want to use for their applications."
