Android 16 Beta 1 is here with an iOS clone feature, APV Codec, and more!

All eyes are on Samsung as it has just launched the Galaxy S25 series, but Google wants some of that attention, too. Google had already mentioned that Android 16 would start with its beta releases sometime in January 2025, and here we are with Android 16 Beta 1, which is now rolling out to supported Google Pixel smartphones.

Android 16 Beta 1: Announced changes

With Android 16 Beta 1, Google has announced the following changes:

Live Updates

Google is introducing Live Updates, a new class of notifications that helps users monitor and access important ongoing activities. If any of that sounds familiar, it’s because the feature is quite similar in look, feel, and functionality to Live Activities that Apple introduced on iPhones with iOS 16.

One point of difference is that Google suggests Live Updates for ride-sharing, food delivery, and navigation use cases since these Live Updates’ notifications are treated with high priority.

Android 16 is phasing out the ability for apps to restrict screen orientation and resizability on large-screen devices like tablets, foldables, and beyond. Google notes that this feature is similar to features that OEMs have added on such devices, allowing users to run apps at any window size and aspect ratio. With Android 16, APIs and manifest attributes that restrict orientation and resizing will be ignored for apps (but not games) on large-screen devices.

Android 16 allows app developers to opt out of this change, but the Android release in 2026 (i.e., Android 17) will make this change mandatory. So, app developers should start working on making their apps adapt to different screen sizes and aspect ratios.

Samsung showed off the Advanced Professional Video codec at the Samsung Developer Conference 2023. This new “professional” video codec aims to provide “perceptually lossless video quality” while using 20% less storage than the existing “conventional professional video codec” formats.

Google mentions that the APV codec has the following features:

• Perceptually lossless video quality (close to raw video quality)
• Low complexity and high throughput intra-frame-only coding (without pixel domain prediction) to better support editing workflows
• Support for high bitrate range up to a few Gbps for 2K, 4K, and 8K resolution content, enabled by a lightweight entropy coding scheme
• Frame tiling for immersive content and for enabling parallel encoding and decoding
• Support for various chroma sampling formats and bit-depths
• Support for multiple decoding and re-encoding without severe visual quality degradation
• Support multi-view video and auxiliary video like depth, alpha, and preview
• Support for HDR10/10+ and user-defined metadata

Android 16 will support the APV 422-10 Profile, which provides YUV422 color sampling, 10-bit encoding, and target bitrates of up to 2Gbps.

Back in 2023, Samsung had mentioned that APV Codec would come to a future Samsung phone. From what we know so far, this hasn’t happened yet. The Galaxy S25 series adds support for Samsung Log video, but that works through a 10-bit HEVC codec. APV support may come with the next One UI update or the next Galaxy flagship.

Predictive back support for three-button navigation

Predictive back is a feature that lets you preview the destination of the back gesture before you fully complete it, allowing you to decide whether to commit to going back or to staying on the current screen. It was introduced as a developer option in Android 13 and enabled by default in Android 15. However, so far, it has been restricted to gesture navigation.

With Android 16 Beta 1, Google is indeed doing so for apps that have correctly implemented predictive back. With three-button navigation, long-pressing the back button will initiate a predictive back animation, giving users a preview of where the back button takes them. This behavior applies across all areas of the system that support predictive back animations, including the system animations).

Generic ranging APIs

Android 16 includes the new RangingManager, which provides ways to determine the distance and angle of supported hardware between the local device and a remote device. RangingManager supports a variety of ranging technologies, such as BLE channel sounding, BLE RSSI-based ranging, Ultra-Wideband, and Wi-Fi round-trip time.

This should theoretically lead to better device tracker support in the OS, as your Android device will soon be able to pinpoint the tracker’s distance and angle.

Night Mode Camera extension API

Google had already mentioned that it would introduce a new Night Mode Indicator API in Android 16, and with Beta 1, it’s here. This API helps apps automatically adjust to low-light environments when capturing images or recording videos.

Vertical Text support

Android 16 adds low-level support for rendering and measuring text vertically to provide foundational vertical writing support for library developers. This is particularly useful for languages like Japanese, which commonly use vertical writing systems.

Gemini Extensions

This is curiously mentioned in the release announcement, but it’s not a part of Android 16 Beta 1 right away. Google highlights that Samsung just launched new Gemini Extensions on the Galaxy S25 series, showing off the new ways that Android apps can integrate with the power of Gemini.

Google says it is working to make this functionality available to more apps with more OEMs on more devices across more form factors. However, the company stops short of providing more details, technical or otherwise, in the announcement. So, we’ll have to dig in to see what changes are coming.

How to install Android 16 Beta 1

As the name implies, this build of Android 16 is still very much a beta release. While it is considered a bit more stable than the bleeding-edge Developer Previews before this, it still contains bugs and issues that need to be ironed out over the coming months. So, installing this Android 16 Beta 1 update on your daily driver is not advisable.

If you are okay with the risks of a non-functional phone and data loss, you can enroll your Pixel device in the Android Beta program on Google’s website. Once enrolled, you will receive an OTA update on your device that you can install as usual to reboot into the new update. Users already in the Android Beta program or on Android 16 Developer Preview 2 will be automatically offered an OTA update to Beta 1.

Note that downgrading your device back to Android 15 will likely lead to a factory reset, so ensure that you have backed up all your important data before you sign up for the program and install the update.

Have you installed Android 16 Beta 1 on your device? How do you like it? What is your favorite feature, and what change do you dislike the most? Let us know in the comments below!