Google officially announced its latest Android version, which is named Upsidedown Cake. It will impact over 2.5 billion smartphones worldwide. Every year, Google releases new upgrades and improvements over the last Android version.
Android 14 has major customization options, including better battery life and more. Google has released the Preview of Android 14 for developers, so they can start working on their backends to improve their device systems and give users more customization options.
As this is a Developer Preview, it is intended for developer use only and not for general users. This Developer preview is used to optimize the apps and check how their app will run on Android 14. As this is the first draft of Android 14, there will be many bugs and errors.
Google expects its developers to submit feedback so they can gather information about their operating system and work on patching to improve and make Android 14 stable for smartphones. This new operating system is expected to start rolling out by the latter half of the year.
What’s New with Android 14 Developer Preview 1
This update will feature some notable API behavioral improvements, battery life and system health improvements, and other customization options. More about Android 14 Preview,
We released the first Developer Preview of #Android14!
It includes changes to streamline background work, along with enhancements to privacy, personalization, security, and more.
Try out the new features and APIs, test your apps, and give us feedback → https://t.co/wC144Pwl26 pic.twitter.com/JLEfs2vfVh— Android Developers (@AndroidDev) February 8, 2023
- API Behavioral Improvements: Companies have made API behavior changes while reducing system resources to give users a more consistent app experience across devices.
- Battery Life and System Health Improvements: Improvements to the internal broadcast system have been made to offer better battery life and more efficient user consumption.
- More Customization Options: Android continues to make improvements in the areas of language and accessibility. Expanding the preferred language for individual apps and adding support for different terms of address when referring to users in gender-neutral language.
- Additionally, the size can now be increased up to 200% (up from 130%), which will be helpful for low-vision users. It will also automatically adjust non-linear fonts to mitigate common layout issues and make the text more readable.
- Grammatical Inflection API: It makes it easier for developers to support users who use grammatical gender, such as French or German.
- Privacy and Security: This time around, Android 14 users may not be allowed to sideload applications, which was hinted at by Google when they released the Android SDK Level 22. However, this will only occur after the risk of infecting devices with malware or other dangerous applications targeting the SDK 22 or lower. To avoid this, Google might disable sideloading. However, developers and enthusiasts may still be able to do so with the adb command:
adb install --bypass-low-target-sdk-block FILENAME.apk- OpenJDK 17 Support: Java 17 is enabled, which is an upcoming developer preview that includes record classes, multi-line strings, and pattern-matching instances. More than 600 million devices will receive the latest ART updates.
- Easier Debugging and Testing: Google is making Developer Mode feature-rich with more toggles for new features.
- Other Improvements: Apart from this, there are runtime receivers, safer implicit intents, safer dynamic code loading, and improvements in background processing, which include the JobScheduler and Foreground Service updates and additions, optimized broadcasts, and app compatibility.
Google has shared the expected timeline for the release of Android 14. The first beta, recommended for general Android users, is scheduled to be released in June 2023. The stable version should be released around August. Last year, Android 13 received its final update in August, and it looks like this year will be similar.
