What you need to know
- Google has launched the first developer preview of Android 14.
- Builds are mostly for developers, with few changes for users.
- Previews can be manually flashed on Pixel 4a 5G and newer Pixel phones.
Android 13 is in full swing, and companies like Samsung, Xiaomi, and OPPO continue to update their phones. Naturally, it’s time to start preparing for Android 14. Google announced the developer preview of Android 14 on Wednesday, beginning the first phase of Google’s next major upgrade cycle.
Since this is a developer preview, Google hasn’t revealed a wealth of user features. Instead, the changes are developer-focused and mostly background changes.
One of the changes for users in Android 14 is the ability to scale fonts up to 200% of their previous size. In addition to this change, Google also prevents text that is already large enough from growing as quickly as smaller text. See the scaling difference below to understand how it works.
Android 13 introduced per-app languages, and Android 14 builds on that, allowing developers to customize their language list based on region. It also includes an API to better support grammatically gendered languages.
For your security, Google blocks the installation of apps that target targetSdkVersion 23. This is to protect users from malware that often targets version 22 to bypass protections implemented in newer versions.
Finally, Google has streamlined background tasks on Android to optimize operations such as downloading and uploading files over Wi-Fi. This aims to simplify app development thanks to new APIs, along with optimizing the precise alarm modification and broadcast system, while improving battery consumption.
For those interested in trying out the Android 14 Developer Preview, it’s available as a manual download that you can flash to your smartphone. Eligible phones include the Pixel 7 series through Pixel 4a 5G. This is a very early developer build, so we don’t recommend flashing it to your primary phone.
In terms of testing schedule, it reflects the testing phases of Android 13, with a developer preview in February and March, a beta release in April, and platform stability by June. So, like last year, we could expect stable Android 14 to be released to his Pixel phone by August, followed by his other Android phones within the next few months.
The Pixel 6a is one of the best value smartphones you can buy. It has a great camera with great performance and won’t break the bank. Early adopters also get the first dibs on new features and software updates.
