By launching two versions of Android per year, knowing how many updates our mobile will receive will be more complicated than ever.

The first Android 16 Developer Preview confirmed suspicions: Google has chosen to accelerate the launch of new versions of Android. There will not be one update per year, but two. Additionally, new versions will arrive a quarter earlier.

Google stepping on the accelerator on Android updates is in some ways exciting from the point of view of users, who will choose to have news more frequently, but it will also make things more difficult than ever know until when our mobile will be updated.

Suddenly, two versions of Android per year

Android's early days have been somewhat chaotic in terms of releasing new versions, but if we've learned anything from the history of Android, it's that for quite some time we've to one new version per year. The only recent exception to this rule was Android 12L, an interim version of Android 12 and Android 13, released for foldable phones a few months before Android 13 arrived. Android updates have arrived, for years, in the third quarter of the year. .

Now Google has decided bring forward the launch to the second quarter to “align it with the launches of new Android terminals”, which generally begin at the end of the year. The idea is that manufacturers have enough time to launch their new generation of mobile phones with the most recent version of Android pre-installed and not with an already outdated version as standard.

This is an endemic Android problem from which no manufacturer is immune. This year, even Google launched its Pixel with an old version of Android, since the Pixel 9 went on sale with Android 14 in August and Android 15 was only ready in September in AOSP version and in October for the Pixel.

Android updates will not only be released sooner, but they will arrive more frequently. The main Android update will be released in the second quarter of the year and in the fourth quarter there will be a second minor update.

A minor update, but an update with a new version of the API and new features, instead of a simple Feature Drop like the ones the Pixel receives every quarter, which only introduce new improvements.

Google says this second update, in the last quarter of the year, will include “feature updates, optimizations, and bug fixes” but will not include changes that impact behavior applications. As a user you will want to have it and you will have a hard time knowing if you are going to get it or not.

Years of updates do not match versions

The problem is that We have gotten into the habit of having a new version every year. the android and now we will have two, which means that in some cases we are not very sure to what extent we will continue to receive system updates or not.

For example, many manufacturers They promise X years of Android updatesa promise made on the assumption that each year there is only one new system update. With two versions of Android per year, these manufacturers will have to choose between keeping the initial promise (and updating twice as many times) or having to adapt the speech so that it includes versions of Android and not years.

Other manufacturers will not have this problem. Google, for example, indicates the date in which support for new Android updates ends (on the Google Pixel 9, until August 2031), instead of the number of years. So, if the two launches per year are achieved by then, the Pixel 9 will receive at least ten Android updates.

In other cases it will not be as clear and This will depend on the interpretation that manufacturers give to their update promises.. More updates, more frequently and for more years. This seems like a bad combination for those expecting their phones to receive the next version of Android soon, although we'll have to wait and see how things develop in the months and years to come.

In Xataka Android | Android 16: news, release date, compatible phones and everything we know so far