Google launches Android 14 Developer Preview for Pixel devices

Google has released the first Developer Preview of Android 14 for Pixel smartphones. If you own a Pixel 4a, Pixel 5 or 5a, Pixel 6 and 6 Pro, Pixel 6a, or Pixel 7/7 Pro, you can download the developer preview to get an early look at the features that will be included in the next major Android release. The preview, in particular, focuses on improving operability between various Android devices and form factors.

Android 14 "builds on the work done in Android 12L and 13 to support tablets and foldable form factors," according to Google, with the addition of window class sizes, layouts, and app quality guidances for large screens. It also streamlines background activity by making changes to how background apps are handled. Foreground services should only be used for the most important user-facing tasks, according to Google, in order to reduce resource usage and prolong battery life.

In terms of customization, Android 14 allows users to scale fonts up to 200 per cent, a 70% increase over Android 13, which allows for a maximum of 130 per cent. Google will apply a non-linear font scaling curve to text that becomes too large, ensuring that text "that is already large enough does not increase at the same rate as smaller text."


Apps with compatibility levels lower than Android 6.0 will also be blocked by Android 14. Google is doing this to prevent runtime exploits in older Android versions. If you are a developer or simply want to try out the preview, go here. Remember that this is the first release preview, so there will undoubtedly be bugs and other inconsistencies, so test it out on a different device.

FAQs

Q1. What are Pixel devices?
Google Pixel is a line of portable consumer electronics devices designed by Google that runs either ChromeOS or Android.

Q2. When was the first google pixel released?
October 20, 2016.