Due to the early update to Android 16, only the successor to the Pixel 8a could start with Android 15.
Android 16 is coming sooner than expected next year. Until now, we had to wait for the summer before Google released its big phone update. It should start earlier in 2025.
Google is not yet giving an exact date, but they are talking about the second quarter as the start date. For comparison: The rollout for Android 15 only started in October.
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Android 16: Two updates a year
In a blog post Google explains why they want to launch Android 16 earlier. The aim is to faster innovation, higher quality and more polished updates
to offer. The aim is to update the operating system every six months in the future.
In practice this means:
- Android 16: A big update in the second quarter
- Android 16.1: A minor update in the fourth quarter
In quarters 1 and 3, however, you want to work with incremental improvements, i.e. fix errors and publish smaller quality updates.
This is not a completely new approach for Google. In the past they had already relied on two updates per year, most recently with the release of Android 8 and 8.1 in 2017.
What Google doesn’t mention: the Pixel 9
Google’s post doesn’t mention the Pixel 9 at all. This is likely to be a key part of the decision to switch to half-yearly updates now.
The Google Pixel 9 was released in September, a month before the release of Android 15 – and therefore only offered Android 14 at launch. Until now, one of the selling points for Google cell phones was that you always received the latest Android version upon release that before anyone else.
With the half-yearly release, a situation like this could probably be avoided again – and thus a repetition of the strange fact that the cheaper Google Pixel 9a 2025 is probably the only Google cell phone that will be equipped with Android 15 upon release.
What else you should know about Android 16
- Android 16 goes by the project name Baklava. Google traditionally names its Android versions after various sweet dishes such as cupcakes, donuts or gingerbread.
- Android 16 should offer live activities like those already known from Apple’s iOS. These are dynamic notifications on the home and lock screens.
- Android 16 could significantly change the user interface. What is expected are revised quick settings and a two-finger gesture as a touch alternative to right-clicking, which has so far only been found on Samsung cell phones.
