Summary
- Android 16 Beta 3 will release on March 13.
- It should hopefully pack more user-facing changes.
- The third beta will also mark Android 16 hitting Platform Stability.
Google officially kicked off the Android 16 beta program in late January 2025, introducing significant improvements tailored for tablets. Within two months, the company rolled out two additional beta builds, including Android 16 beta 2.1, which arrived in late February with swift fixes for some troublesome bugs. Now, with the June release timeline for Android 16’s stable build fast approaching, the company has teased the release of the third beta build of the OS.
Android 16: 7 major bugs that should make you think twice before downloading the beta
Broken themes, apps, and navigation
The official Android Developers account on X announced that Android 16 Beta 3 will drop tomorrow, March 13.
Android 16’s second beta packed several improvements, including new camera controls for third-party apps and UltraHDR support for images in HEIC format. It also enforced an edge-to-edge layout for apps, removing the black bars under the navigation gesture and status bars.
The third Android 16 beta is expected to introduce more user-facing changes. Although Google released the first Developer Preview in mid-November 2024, user-focused changes only started appearing in the beta builds.
With the upcoming beta build, Android 16 beta should hit Platform Stability, signaling that all developer APIs and app-facing behaviors have been finalized. This will give developers the green signal to build and update their apps using the new APIs in Android 16.
Android 16 stable arrives in Q2 2025
Sameer Samat, Google’s President of the Android Ecosystem, confirmed at MWC 2025 that Android 16 is on track for a June release. Based on Google’s accelerated timeline, the last Android 16 beta should land in April.
Following this, the company could showcase all the user-facing changes in Android 16 at its yearly developer conference in May and then push the stable update to compatible Pixel phones in June. We might see a few hotfix beta builds in between to squash major bugs, but otherwise, this is the timeline that Google should most likely stick to.
A leak indicates that Android 16’s stable build may land on June 3, 2025.
Note that following Android 16’s release in Q2 2025, Google plans to push a minor SDK update in Q4 2025. This update will prioritize new features and optimizations rather than major behavioral changes.
