Android 14: What’s New, features, leaks, and beta timeline
We’re beginning to see a more complete picture of what Google is bringing to the table with this year’s launch with the release of Android 14 Developer Preview 2. Once Android 14’s stable build is released later this summer, it will be the operating system that powers the best Android phones of 2023 and 2024. It is highly unlikely that it will undergo a significant redesign like Android 12, but it still appears to be on track to bring about a number of quality-of-life enhancements, including increased battery life, better accessibility, and a redesigned back navigation gesture. Continue reading to discover everything we currently know about Android 14.
Android 14 timeline, potential release date, and supported devices
The roadmap for Android 14 is similar to that of earlier versions. We’re looking at two developer previews, the first of which was released in February and the second of which was released in March, as you can see in the timeline shared by Google below. Google will release the first beta sometime in April, but the main release will probably happen in May. The business has a history of saving some of the most intriguing consumer-facing updates for Google I/O, the release that coincides with its developer conference. You can watch Android 14 perform live on stage on May 10 if you mark that date in your calendar.
According to the roadmap, Android 14 will reach platform stability with the third beta in June. The new features and APIs added in Android 14 can thus be used by developers to create their apps without having to worry about any additional changes. In July, a fourth beta will be released, and after that, the stable release will come out. We're probably looking at an August or September release, if history is any guide.
The first developer preview is compatible with the following Google Pixel smartphones:
Pixel 7 and 7 Pro
Pixel 6a
Pixel 6 and 6 Plus
5G Pixel 5a
Pixel 4a (5G) and Pixel 5
Note that this beta is no longer planned for the Google Pixel 4a without the 5G denominator. A few months before the 4a (5G), it was released. It's still unclear whether it will receive the update, but since it was released with Android 10, Google's promise of three software updates means that it won't receive any updates after Android 13.
The Google Pixel phone line is the only ones eligible for the developer preview, as usual. Later, as has been the case with recent Android releases, more handsets from different manufacturers might join the beta program. Previously, beta builds were accessible for smartphones made by Xiaomi, Asus, OnePlus, Oppo, Nokia, and other manufacturers.
You can install generic system images (GSIs) on any phone that supports Project Treble after Google releases them, which is almost certain to happen. Before you consider going that route, make sure you are completely familiar with how to install an Android beta.
We anticipate that Android 14 will be made available on all recent Android phones, including the flagship models from the previous few years, once beta testing is complete. Nevertheless, the length of the rollout may exceed a few months, depending on your manufacturer. Within a few months of the stable release, Samsung's phones typically receive an update; however, this can't be said for devices made by Asus, Motorola, and other manufacturers.
What's new in Developer Preview 2 of Android 14
With the release of the second developer preview for Android 14, we now have a more complete understanding of what to expect from this year's OS upgrade. This includes the introduction of a few of the DP1-first discovered hidden features, which Google is now highlighting in the DP2 announcement as official features.
For instance, this is where DP2's regional preferences page is located. This page was first discovered by Mishaal Rahman in February, but it is now visible because of this month's launch. You can customize your units and number preferences in Android 14 by accessing the settings that are located just below the per-app language options. You can use it to change between different apps.
We're also seeing the revamped permission control option for media files first alluded to in DP1. These settings are similar to how iOS works currently, forcing all apps not using Google's permissionless API to ask for your level of control options for media.
In addition to focusing on enhancing the Credential Manager API it unveiled last month, Google's announcement for DP2 aims to get us closer to the password-free future we all long for. As DP2 continues to prioritize enhancing system performance, cached apps are compelled to shut down much faster than Android 13 could, which should result in longer battery life and better resource management. Non-dismissable notifications will also become much less bothersome in the future because you can now swipe anything marked as an ongoing event away when your phone is unlocked outside of critical tasks.
This is only a summary of what Google has officially stated; there is more. For the few apps that support them, such as Google News and the system settings, Google has enabled predictive back gestures outside of those official announcements. You can see a preview of the screen you’ll next navigate to when you enable predictive back gestures in the developer options. This functions with views from one app to another, from one app to the home screen, and within the same app.
Small adjustments were also made by Google to the media player. The play/pause button now has a splash animation, and the lava lamp-style animation that billows on top of the media player has returned after first appearing in Android 13 QPR2 Beta 1.
As he reported on XDA, Mishaal Rahman noticed Google working on a quicker PIN entry option. You might no longer need to press enter to verify your identity if you choose a PIN with six digits or more. Instead, when you press the final digit, the phone will instantly recognize that you've just entered the right numbers and unlock itself. Although the iPhone made this feature popular, it can also be found on many Android phones and in custom ROMs.
With Android 14 on your Pixel phone, you might be in for a treat if you love customization and Emoji Kitchen. You may soon be able to make personalized wallpapers using your preferred Emoji Kitchen variations, as noticed by Mishaal Rahman. It’s undoubtedly a fantastic way to provide you with access to an essentially infinite number of personal wallpapers. The current name of the feature is Emoji Lab.
You can now set your display or camera to flash whenever a notification arrives thanks to a new accessibility feature. Although you can't currently change the camera's flash settings, it might be a useful way to restore notification lights on devices without them. In any case, the feature is primarily designed for people who have hearing impairments.
Google is working to effectively disable those shady task manager apps that are all over the Play Store, which could be a big change for the apps your relatives download for their smartphones. A change to the specific permission these apps use will only allow it to kill its own background processes instead of allowing these services to clear your background tasks, forcing Android to restart tasks that didn’t need to be killed in the first place. With Android 14, only system apps that have the KILL_BACKGROUND_PROCESSES permission can halt the execution of other processes.
What's new in Developer Preview 1 of Android 14
On February 8, 2023, Google made available the initial developer preview of Android 14. The majority of announcements center on features that developers need to be aware of because it exists solely to aid developers in getting their applications ready for the new release. However, there are some intriguing details in here, so let’s start with Google’s official announcements
Big screens and cross-device use cases are emphasized
Google is still working to make Android and its ecosystem of apps the ideal fit for devices with various screen sizes, including smartphones, foldable devices, tablets, and Chromebooks. Android 12L was the catalyst for the push toward big-screen optimization, which was later strengthened with Android 13, and Android 14 isn’t expected to be any different. The business is recapping some of the advancements made and directing programmers to new classes and best practices that make it simpler for them to create applications for various form factors.
The large screen app quality checklists, which give developers a simple way to assess how well their products will perform across different devices, have reportedly been updated by Google. Additionally, there are new sample layouts for various app types that are intended to motivate programmers to produce similarly adaptive layouts and apps that make the most of available screen space.
For tablets with keyboard cases and laptops that can run Android apps, improved support for keyboards and touchpads is one novel way this could manifest. Android 14 may allow you to remap modifier keys like Ctrl, Alt, and Meta (the button used for the Windows menu), claims Android expert Mishaal Rahman in a piece for XDA. Additionally, you might be able to assign more keyboard shortcuts to commands for various system-level features, such as access to the Recents screen, mute, and zoom.
Mishaal Rahman additionally found that Android 14 might support touchpad gestures. You will be able to use features that you are accustomed to from Windows or MacBook laptops as a result. Vendors could support gestures for going back, going home, opening the Recents overview, opening the notification drawer, and quickly switching between apps, according to some code.
Streamlined background operations result in less battery consumption.
Over time, Android's standby battery life has significantly improved, but there is still room for improvement. With Android 14, Google is making changes to limit foreground services to the most important user-facing tasks only. As a result, apps won't be able to fully utilize your phone's resources when they only need to perform background tasks. Google is also facilitating the programming of more complex background task rules, such as requiring an app to only download large files when your phone is connected to Wi-Fi.
For apps that use precise alarms to trigger a notification or a task at a specific time in the future, Google has more restrictions planned. Google encourages developers to avoid setting exact alarms whenever possible, but newly installed apps targeting Android 13 or higher will need to ask users for their permission. Alarm and calendar apps are exempt from the restriction.
Google is also enhancing Android’s internal broadcast system in the background. For those of you who are unfamiliar, this basically entails Android informing apps of specific events, such as when a certain battery level is reached or when airplane mode is activated or deactivated. While the majority of the modifications to this system are intended to be internal to Android and not have an impact on how apps function, developers must be aware that there is a possibility that context-registered broadcasts will occasionally be queued up before being sent to cached apps. As a result, the system should have better standby battery life since it will wake up less frequently to send these broadcasts.
Additionally, new Google Play policies will require apps to use these new, more restrictive APIs; the company says more information on this is forthcoming.
Android 14 DP1 is putting your screen-on time front and center in the system setting's battery stats, right above all other usage statistics, to emphasize the point about the promised battery life improvements. This change is a blessing for those who use screen-on time as a barometer for how good or bad the battery life is after it was completely removed from the battery section in Android 12 and only reintroduced with Android 13.
larger fonts and new hearing device settings improve accessibility
Google is making the Android operating system more accessible, as it does with almost every new version. Text can now be scaled up to 200% instead of the previous maximum of 130% in Android 14. Google is also implementing a non-linear font scaling curve to prevent any layout issues brought on by this setting. This will stop already-large text from getting any bigger than is necessary.
In the Accessibility panel of Android 14's settings, Mishaal Rahman also discovered a new hearing devices section. It will enable Bluetooth pairing for new hearing aids and gather useful toggles in one location, such as the hearing aid compatibility toggle, which is intended to enhance audio streaming to these devices. Google is probably going to enable this option in later releases.
enhanced regional and language preferences per app
Additionally, Google announced changes to the new per-app language options in Android 13, which let you modify the language that each app is displayed in. The languages that are displayed in the settings menu can be changed, giving developers the ability to display different options for different regions or conduct A/B tests to determine which languages should be supported.
Android 14 formally introduces a new Grammatical Inflection API for languages with grammatical gender. As a result, it is simpler to display various grammatical genders according to the appropriate way to address an app user. Developers only need to add inflected versions for all pertinent terms in a translation; the API handles the rest. This eliminates the need to modify each string that uses a grammatical gender individually.
greater security as a result of blocking older app installations
Inadvertent source code leaks have already revealed that Google is limiting sideloading with Android 14. Apps that target an SDK version lower than 23, introduced in 2015 with Android 6, won't by default be able to be installed. Google explains that in order to get around limitations present in SDK versions 23 and higher, malware frequently targets older versions of the Android operating system. Even if malicious actors are successful in convincing users to sideload an app rather than download it from the Play Store, this will make it much more difficult for malware to infect devices.
It will be possible to bypass the block by installing the outdated app using ADB with the command adb install --bypass-low-target-sdk-block FILENAME.apk if you are absolutely dependent on it.
An excellent new back gesture animation is coming to Android.
The way that many people use their smartphones has completely changed since Google introduced full gesture navigation in Android 10. The company hasn't completely redesigned gesture navigation since then; only minor adjustments have been made. While Google revealed during a panel discussion at the Android Dev Summit that the company will probably stick with the way gestures currently function, Android 14 will offer a significant upgrade in the form of predictive back gestures. When you use the back gesture, the system will provide new animations indicating the screen you will move to next. Both within apps and when you next move brings you to the home screen, this will function.
The first Developer Preview of Android 14 will give us a first look at these animations in action. Mishaal Rahman, an Android expert, demonstrated how to activate hidden flags in a rooted Developer Preview and provided a crude app with support for it. As demonstrated in the video below, this enhances the back gesture with peeking animations so that you can see where you will navigate to next.
Each Android version has a unique codename that is arranged alphabetically. Although Google no longer uses these codes for marketing purposes in the public eye, they are still in use on the inside. We all understand that the next letter in the alphabet is U thanks to Android 13, also known as Tiramisu. As a result, Google has decided to call its newest creation "Android 14 Upside Down Cake," which is the only logical choice. Although it feels a little bit unfair, here we are.
Similar to the iPhone 14, Android 14 will have a satellite connectivity option.
A number of iPhones with emergency satellite connectivity have been released by Apple. The same technology will be available on Android, according to Hiroshi Lockheimer of Google, who expressed his excitement about "enabling all of this in the next version of Android." Since the manufacturer of Snapdragon chips announced satellite support for its chips during its IFA 2022 keynote, Qualcomm modems are likely to be the first in line to provide support for this.
Bluetooth could pick up distance measurement.
The use of wireless accessories, including some of the best earbuds, has been transformed by the adaptable Bluetooth standard. The connectivity protocol may be even more helpful in Android 14. Google is developing a new Bluetooth Distance Measurement API that would make it simpler to locate misplaced accessories, as was discovered in the AOSP. Although it isn't as precise as ultra wide-band (UWB), it can indicate whether you are getting nearer or farther away from a specific Bluetooth device that is connected.
The Watch Unlock feature, which would keep your phone unlocked as long as your preferred smartwatch is nearby, may also be powered by this API.
This article was edited by help of quillbot ai tools to improve SEO an paraphrasing issues.
