Google releases a new version of Android each year, and since 2013 the releases have all come between August and November. That, however, might be set to change with Android 16.
While Android 15 is only expected to start rolling out to supported Pixels on October 15, Google seems to already be thinking about releasing Android 16 much sooner than usual – at some point in the second quarter of next year in fact, so between April and June.
That would be a pretty significant shift in strategy, but then again Google has this year similarly switched its hardware announcement from the usual October to August, thus creating the weird situation where the new Pixels launched with Android 14 on board since Android 15 wasn’t ready.
If Android 16 arrives by the end of June next year, and Google sticks with August for its next hardware reveal, then the Pixel 10 series will have no problem running Android 16 out of the box.
The news regarding Android 16’s release in Q2 comes from a deep dive in Google’s Compatibility Definition Document for Android 15 for developers, as well as several patches to the Android Open Source Project, which all reference big changes being pushed to “25Q2” or “25Q2/Android W”. W is the letter of the alphabet that’s after V, and Android 15 was codenamed Vanilla Ice Cream, so clearly W is Android 16 (that said, Google has apparently decided to skip a few letters and codename it baklava recently).
Of course these are just hints, and nothing is set in stone just yet. Even if it was, things could still change – both Android 15 and Android 14 saw delayed releases due to last-minute issues, so that may happen to Android 16 as well. But with a release in Q2, it would at least one-up Apple’s yearly iOS outing, for what that’s worth.