Google releases a new version of Android every year. Android 15 was released this year, and usually new versions appear in the third or fourth quarter. But now there is reason to believe that Google has decided to significantly speed up the mobile OS development cycle – according to some reports, Android 16 will be released in the second quarter of 2025, writes Android Authority.
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New versions of Android are most often released in August, September or October. For example, Android 15 came out in September, Android 14 came out in early October, and Android 13 came out in August. Before this, only Android 4.1 Jelly Bean was released in July 2012. The exact date changes every year, but in general releases follow a predictable cycle – Google usually has enough time to plan, deploy and test new features and APIs in the next update. Everything that the company does not have time to do, it transfers to the next version. From the very beginning, the way developers interact with AOSP (Android Open Source Project) branches has remained the same.
But this year, Google moved Android to a Trunk-Based Development (TBD) model, where code changes are pushed directly into the trunk. Thanks to this, the company can now release new versions faster than before, so it is possible that Android 16 will release earlier than usual. When reviewing the Compatibility Definition Document (CDD) for Android 15, Google twice mentioned Q2 2025 as the release of the next Android – under the previous model, the platform would have been released a quarter later. The first stable release based on the TBD model took place in March of this year, and it was Android 14 QPR2. Since then, Google has started labeling major releases with dates: Android 14 QPR2 – 24Q1 (or Q1 2024), Android 14 QPR3 – 24Q2, Android 15 – 24Q3, and the upcoming Android 15 QPR1 – 24Q4.
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Over the past few weeks, Google engineers have commented on the project that the next major Android release will be 25Q2. This was first mentioned in a comment for a patch that adds a minimum requirement to the Android W version of the Linux kernel – it states that this change will appear in “25Q2/Android”, so it will not be included in the main branch until about three version 25Q1 will not be frozen for a month. The second mention is in a patch with a new API in the Bluetooth stack – this patch was also not included in the main branch, because version 24Q4 “does not involve API changes.” This makes sense because 24Q4 is Android 15 QPR1 and API changes are only expected in major platform releases. That is, the patch was delayed until the 25Q2 window. The third mention also talked about a new API that cannot be introduced until 25Q2 – if 25Q2 served as the designation for Android 15 QPR3, then introducing new APIs in the life cycle of the current version makes no sense. Finally, the next SDK version upgrade is also planned for Q2 2025; and version 25Q3 is referred to internally as QPR.
Thus, the release of Android 16 should be expected from April to June 2025. But the company is unlikely to release the next version of the OS before May, when the traditional Google I/O event is expected, so the most likely date seems to be June. And an even earlier release of Android will mean that the next Pixel devices will be released on a new version of the platform, and not like the Pixel 9, which received last year’s Android 14 at the start of sales.