Google: Android 16 release scheduled for June

This year, Android 16 will be released earlier than usual – in June, Android Police reports, citing a statement by Sameer Samat, president of Google’s Android Ecosystem division, which he made at the MWC 2025 exhibition.

Image source: android.com

«So far so good. I haven’t had a release where the bug count is where I want it to be, but the team is working hard and we’re excited to get there,” Samat said. New versions of Android have been released in August or later in recent years, often coinciding with the launch of flagship Pixel phones, but this year the company has shifted its development process to a new, more efficient Trunk Stable model.

«Trunk Stable development means that everyone working on Android is making changes to the same branch of code. We can build the system more regularly and more often. This is the opposite of everyone developing different branches and then merging them at the end. Then it takes a long time to solve problems and issues. One of the reasons for the old schedule is that we were going to do this merge in June. Then it would take from June to the end of the year to solve these problems. So one of the challenges we have internally is to see if we can do it sooner,” Samir Samat added.

In recent years, Google has been expanding the capabilities of current versions of Android, but numbered releases are more important to the company than ever. “This year, we’re doing more to highlight what’s in a release. We know we have a lot of fans around the world who want to understand more about [Android’s] depth. Many users also want new features faster, and they want us to update [Android] more often. To do this, we’ve broken Android into modules and components. There are some fundamental changes that can only come with a major release of the operating system, but there are other things for which we’ve designed Android in such a way that a component can be updated more frequently. When we have new features, there’s always a choice between saving them for a major operating system release or delivering them to people with quarterly Android updates. We’ve had a great response to Android releases because it feels like your phone is constantly getting better,” the top manager said.

Android 16 Beta 2.1 is now available for current Pixel phones. The company will share more details about the final version of Android 16 at the Google I/O 2025 conference, which is scheduled for May 20.