Android model 10
Google launched Android 10 — the primary Android model to shed its letter and be recognized just by a quantity, with no dessert-themed moniker hooked up — in September of 2019. Most noticeably, the software program caused a completely reimagined interface for Android gestures, this time disposing of the tappable Again button altogether and counting on a totally swipe-driven method to system navigation.
Android 10 packed loads of different quietly vital enhancements, together with an up to date permissions system with extra granular management over location knowledge together with a brand new system-wide darkish theme, a brand new distraction-limiting Focus Mode, and a brand new on-demand reside captioning system for any actively enjoying media.
Android 10’s new privateness permissions mannequin provides some much-needed nuance into the realm of location knowledge.
JR Raphael / IDG
Android model 11
Android 11, launched in the beginning of September 2020, was a fairly substantial Android replace each beneath the hood and on the floor. The model’s most vital adjustments revolve round privateness: The replace constructed upon the expanded permissions system launched in Android 10 and added within the choice to grant apps location, digital camera, and microphone permissions solely on a restricted, single-use foundation.
Android 11 additionally made it tougher for apps to request the power to detect your location within the background, and it launched a characteristic that routinely revokes permissions from any apps you haven’t opened currently. On the interface stage, Android 11 included a refined method to conversation-related notifications together with a brand new streamlined media participant, a brand new Notification Historical past part, a local screen-recording characteristic, and a system-level menu of connected-device controls.
Android 11’s new media participant seems as a part of the system Fast Settings panel, whereas the brand new connected-device management display comes up everytime you press and maintain your cellphone’s bodily energy button.
JR Raphael / IDG
Android model 12
Google formally launched the ultimate model of Android 12 in October 2021, alongside the launch of its Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Professional telephones.
In a twist from the earlier a number of Android variations, probably the most important progressions with Android 12 had been totally on the floor. Android 12 featured the largest reimagining of Android’s interface since 2014’s Android 5.0 (Lollipop) model, with an up to date design commonplace often known as Materials You — which revolves across the thought of you customizing the looks of your machine with dynamically generated themes primarily based in your present wallpaper colours. These themes routinely change anytime your wallpaper adjustments, and so they prolong all through the whole working system interface and even into the interfaces of apps that help the usual.
Android 12 ushered in an entire new feel and appear for the working system, with an emphasis on easy colour customization.
Floor-level components apart, Android 12 introduced a (lengthy overdue) renewed focus to Android’s widget system together with a bunch of vital foundational enhancements within the areas of efficiency, safety, and privateness. The replace offered extra highly effective and accessible controls over how completely different apps are utilizing your knowledge and the way a lot info you enable apps to entry, for example, and it included a brand new remoted part of the working system that permits AI options to function completely on a tool, with none potential for community entry or knowledge publicity.
Android model 13
Android 13, launched in August 2022, was concurrently probably the most bold updates in Android historical past and probably the most refined model adjustments to this point.
On tablets and foldable telephones, Android 13 launched a slew of serious interface updates and additions geared toward bettering the large-screen Android expertise — together with an enhanced split-screen mode for multitasking and a ChromeOS-like taskbar for straightforward app entry from wherever.
On common telephones, Android 13 caused far much less noticeable adjustments — largely just a few enhancements to the system clipboard interface, a brand new native QR code scanning operate throughout the Android Fast Settings space, and a smattering of under-the-hood enhancements.
Android model 14
Following a full eight months of out-in-the-open refinement, Google’s 14th Android model landed in the beginning of October 2023 within the midst of the corporate’s Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Professional launch occasion.
Just like the model earlier than it, Android 14 doesn’t appear like a lot on the floor. That’s partly due to the development of Google transferring increasingly more towards a improvement cycle that revolves round smaller ongoing updates to particular person system-level components year-round — one thing that’s truly a major benefit for Android customers, even when it does have a clumsy impact on individuals’s notion of progress.
However regardless of the refined nature of its first impression, Android 14 contains a good quantity of noteworthy new stuff. The software program introduces a brand new system for dragging and dropping textual content between apps, for example, in addition to a brand new sequence of native customization choices for the Android lock display.
Android 14 contains choices for fully altering the looks of the lock display in addition to for customizing which shortcuts present up on it.
JR Raphael / IDG
Android 14 supplies a variety of new enhancements to privateness and safety, too, together with a brand new settings-integrated dashboard for managing all of your well being and health knowledge and controlling which apps and gadgets can entry it. And it provides in a extra info-rich and context-requiring system for seeing precisely why apps need entry to your location after they request such a permission.
Past that, Android 14 encompasses a first style of Google’s AI-generated customized wallpaper creator, although that’s accessible solely on the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Professional to start out.
You’ll be able to generate all types of attention-grabbing wallpapers in seconds by way of Android 14’s AI generator characteristic — however solely on the Pixel 8 or Pixel 8 Professional for now.
JR Raphael / IDG
The software program additionally sports activities a sequence of serious accessibility additions, equivalent to an enhanced on-demand magnifier, a neater approach to enhance font dimension in any app, improved help for listening to help connections, and a built-in choice to have your cellphone flash its digital camera gentle anytime a brand new notification arrives.
Android model 15
Google technically launched Android 15 in September 2024, however in an uncommon twist, that was solely the launch of the software program’s uncooked supply code. The brand new Android model didn’t present up even on the corporate’s personal Pixel gadgets till simply over a month later, in mid-October.
With Google more and more providing Android enhancements exterior of the formal working system context, among the extra attention-grabbing updates in latest months will not be related on to Android 15 itself. For example, the Android Circle to Search system and new theft safety options have proven up all through 2024 for gadgets operating even older Android variations.
As for Android 15 itself, although, the replace introduces a variety of noteworthy new options — together with a system-level Non-public Area possibility that permits you to maintain delicate apps out of sight and accessible solely with authentication. The software program additionally additional enhances the multitasking techniques launched in Android 13 with the brand new choice to maintain the large-screen-exclusive Android taskbar current always and the brand new potential to launch particular pairs of apps collectively right into a side-by-side split-screen with a single faucet.
When you arrange Android 15’s new Non-public Area characteristic, sure apps seem in a particular protected — and optionally hidden — space of your app drawer.
JR Raphael / IDG
Past that, Android 15 features a redesigned system quantity panel, a brand new choice to routinely reenable a tool’s Bluetooth radio a day after it’s been disabled, and a Pixel-specific Adaptive Vibration characteristic that intelligently adjusts a cellphone’s vibration depth primarily based on the setting.
Adaptive Vibration and a redesigned quantity panel present welcome upgrades to the Android audio expertise.
JR Raphael / IDG
Add in a brand new charging-time connected-device-control display saver, a space-saving app archiving possibility for occasionally used apps, and a long-under-development predictive again visible that permits you to see a peek at the place you’re headed earlier than you get there — and this small-seeming replace is definitely shaping as much as be a fairly hefty replace development.
Android model 16 (beta)
In a serious change from latest Android improve cycles, Google determined to go together with two new Android variations per yr as of 2025 — beginning with the spring’s Android 16 replace after which following with one other launch later within the fall. (It’s not completely clear but if the second annual replace will get its personal full quantity or act as an extension of the Android 16 moniker, however Google says it’ll be a “main” launch.)
True to that promise, the primary Android 16 beta arrived in late January, and Google’s slowly however certainly been following it up with further updates that pave the way in which for its last public rollout someday within the second quarter.
Thus far, probably the most important options in Android 16 are shaping as much as be Stay Updates — a brand new kind of notifications designed to help persistent, ongoing alerts, just like what Apple does with iOS’s Stay Actions — together with quite a lot of enhancements to Android’s Fast Settings interface. We’re additionally seeing early indicators of improvement round a sequence of adjustments seemingly geared toward making Android a extra succesful desktop working system (hmm…) together with the beginnings of a new native system for notification summaries (one thing you may truly accomplish this on the spot, by the way, with the best kind of artistic pondering).
Android 16 additionally has the standard array of under-the-hood enhancements round efficiency, privateness, safety, and the all-around Android-device-using expertise. For example, the newest Android 16 beta contains help for a extra superior commonplace of listening to help help in addition to stronger community safety safety and extra stringent tips round how apps adapt to larger-screen environments.
Android 16 requires apps to adapt extra intelligently to large-screen settings (as seen at proper) versus simply sustaining an awkwardly slim phone-like type (as seen at left).
The ultimate Android 16 rollout is anticipated to start someday in April or Could — which might line up with the timing of this yr’s Google I/O convention, maybe not coincidentally — although with the way in which device-makers have been flailing with Android replace deliveries currently, it’s anybody’s guess as to how lengthy it’ll take for the software program to achieve gadgets exterior of Google’s personal Pixel merchandise.
This text was initially revealed in November 2017 and most just lately up to date in March 2025.
