Google will show off some of Android 16’s tricks as it gears for early release

What you need to know

• Google’s Head of Android said the tech giant is on track to release Android 16 in June, due to the new ‘Trunk Stable’ development process.
• The tech giant plans to highlight a few features from this update for users early on.
• However, with major OS drops, the company is still deciding if they want to release all the new features in one go or do it as quarterly Android updates.

Android 16 is the next big thing for Google other than releasing its yearly devices and this time it's doing things differently. Major software rollouts are usually accompanied by the company’s flagship model (Pixel 10 this year) in August every year; however, Google is on track to give us Android 16 earlier in June, with the company’s President of Android ecosystem, Sameer Samat, confirming the same at MWC (via Android Police).

Speaking to the publication, Samat said, “So far, so good. I've never had a release where at this point the bug count was where I wanted it to be, but the team is working really hard, and we're excited about getting it there.”

The tech giant has set this early goal for itself and according to the company, this is due to the recent changes within the Android team. This happened late last year when Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai announced the merger of the software and hardware teams, bringing the Platforms and Devices team under one roof. We assume that this could have brought a shift in key goals, which accelerated the company’s software rollout.

Speaking further to the publication, Samat mentioned that the team is now in something called the “Trunk Stable” stage— this essentially means that all developers working on the software are contributing their efforts to a single shared branch of code. In contrast to what would happen earlier, where developers would work separately on different branches and merge closer to the release. This would allow for the teams to perform several tests on the software to look for bugs and defects — allowing for an early release.

“One of the reasons for the original release schedule is we would do that merge in June. Then it would take us from June until later in the year to work out all of those issues. And so one of the challenges we set ourselves internally is to see if we can get this out earlier,” Samat added.

The Android head added that the company will be doing more to highlight what this major software update would bring to devices, possibly hinting at showing off some features before launch.

"When we have new capabilities, the decision is always between do we hold this for an operating system release or do we give it to people on a more quarterly cadence with Android drops."

Early Release and its impact on Samsung’s One UI 7

A recent rumor was floating around that Samsung will not be releasing incremental updates like "One UI 7.1" or "One UI 7.1.1." but it will jump right ahead to the One UI 8, considering Google’s Android 16 early release.

The Korean OEM’s One UI 7 is delayed until April and tipster Ice Universe thinks the company won't be bringing any more updates to this version of the software. Considering they might have to jump right ahead to the next one, with Google all set to release Android 16 earlier.

However, this claim doesn’t have any backing, but with the way Samsung is treating its current software rollout, it is highly unlikely it will jump to the next one as early as June.