Google has announced the Android 14 Developer Preview. You can now install it on the Google Pixel 7 Pro and other supported Pixel phones. It offers a glimpse of what to expect from the new Android release. However, it doesn’t include all of the upcoming consumer-facing features just yet. Here’s what Google announced for the Android 14 Developer Preview 1 and what else we can expect.
Google is launching Android 14 Developer Preview for Pixel phones
As of DP1, there are five tentpoles, starting with “Working across devices and form factors”. Google says “Android 14 builds on the work done in Android 12L and 13 to support tablets and foldable form factors.” Google cites recent work on large screen layouts and guidelines, aiming to make it easier to optimize apps for different form factors with each Android release. As for working across devices, Google points to the Cross-device SDK, which will enable the cross-device audio switching announced earlier this year.
In terms of Customization, end users will be able to “scale their font up to 200%”, which is up from 130% on Pixel devices today.
To avoid issues where the text gets too big, Google has implemented a non-linear font scaling curve in Android 14. This ensures that text that is already large enough doesn’t grow at the same rate as smaller text.
With a Grammatical Inflection API, developers can “more easily add support for users who speak languages with grammatical gender.”
To improve privacy and security, Android 14 prevents apps with a targetSdkVersion lower than 23 (Android 6.0 in 2015) from being installed. However, the older installed apps on devices upgrading to Android 14 are not affected.
At launch, Android 14 Developer Preview system images are available for the Pixel 4a 5G, Pixel 5, Pixel 5a, Pixel 6, Pixel 6 Pro, Pixel 6a, Pixel 7, and Pixel 7 Pro, as well as the Android Emulator.
DP1 (UPP1.230113.009) with the February 2023 security patch is official for developers only. It is only available via manual download and flashing/sideloading. Plus, the public Android Beta is coming later in April.
Also see: Google launches Microsoft’s AI-powered ChatGPT rival ‘Bard’
