In March of this year, at Mobile World Congress, Google said Android 16 was on track to arrive as early as June. That was a bit of a surprise, given that the annual OS upgrade usually arrives in the fall.
That projection was correct, as Google has officially confirmed that the latest version of its OS is set to drop today. In a post yesterday evening on X, the official Android Developers account simply said, "It's almost time for the Android 16 final release! See you back here tomorrow."
This announcement comes a day after Apple's annual WWDC conference, where it revealed a number of improvements to its ecosystem, including the Liquid Glass cross-platform design language, iOS 26 (with a ton of new features, some of which are straight from Android), and more.
Android 16 will be hitting phones much earlier than usual. Android 15's official release date was Oct.15, 2024, and Android 14's was Oct. 4, 2023. Both of those coincided with new phone lineups, so Google seems to be making an effort to highlight both software and hardware at different times.
In addition to a significant design overhaul (the first one in four years), Android 16 will bring big changes like live notification updates on your lock screen, better support for listening devices, and most likely improved security. (Some of the features won't arrive until later this year.)
Android 16 will be exclusive to Pixel devices at first, but will eventually roll out to other phones.
Google didn't say what time they would drop more details about Android 16, but we'll upgrade as soon as we have information.
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