Android 12 beta with a new design – Introduction – Overview

The chance that you will soon find Android 12 on your phone is low, and the chance that you will see a lot of the new interface is even less with the use of skins that change their appearance. That’s the last sentence of this preview, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise, as something like this has been in previews of newer versions of Android for years now.

If you’ve seen or read these previous previews, you already know. Android’s new interface will only appear on pixels and in time on the increasingly rare phones with Android One, while the new functions will often be usable on phones from Samsung, Xiaomi and OnePlus for example. However, they often receive the upgrade later.

Still, this new upgrade is worth it. The stock Android interface ideas and the way the interface works are ultimately reflected in the skins of the manufacturers. Take gesture control from a few years ago, which is now in every phone. In addition, many functions have been added.

Google announced the beta during the keynote of his own I / O developer conference. This cadence recalls the time before the crown. For example, in 2019 the first developer preview of Android 10 also appeared in winter, with the first beta showing a lot more I / O. The release then took place in late summer.

That timeline is now roughly the same, although the release is now clearly scheduled for some time after August. It is not yet known exactly when it will be, but Google is talking about “the fall”. So it might just be in October, when the manufacturer typically releases their Pixel phones. When released, the upgrade will come for Google’s Pixel 3 phones and the search giant’s newer models. Hopefully, phone upgrades from other manufacturers will follow soon.

This beta is not only available for Pixel phones, but also for devices from eleven other manufacturers. The beta is of course fun to play, but we don’t recommend immediately putting it on your daily phone. You are not sure in advance if everything is working and if so, if it is working stably. Some applications do not work, like the previous times. When downgrading you also need to erase all data and root access is not yet available for the new beta. We tried the beta on a Google Pixel 5.