• Android 14, or “Upside Down Cake” will likely be launched to the public between July and October 2023.
• This is according to a newly released developer preview of the upcoming OS from Google.
• New features coming to Android 14 are around improved accessibility and safety.

It was revealed last year by XDA-Developers that Android 14 is codenamed “Upside Down Cake,” in keeping with naming versions of Android after delicious desserts, like Android 6 called “Marshmellow” and Android 9 called “Pie”.

We have decided to celebrate this with the pineapple-encrusted confectionary used in our cover image.

On to sweeter news: Thursday saw the first developer preview of Android 14, or Upside Down Cake, released by Google, and with it came a better idea of what the tech giant envisions for the release schedule of the new OS.

According to the details outlined in the preview, Android 14 will reach platform stability in June. This means that the OS has reached final internal and external APIs, final app-facing behaviours and final non-SDK API lists.

Basically, from that point, Android 14 will see no further changes affecting apps on the OS.

Google is encouraging all app, game, SDK, library and game engine developers to use the platform stability milestone as a target for planning final compatibility testing and public release.

The June milestone also gives us a better idea of when Android 14 will launch since there is no official word yet.

According to the timeline set out on the preview site, work on the OS within the stable beta phase (Beta 3, 4 and 5) will continue into July, after which point developers will have “several weeks” to make final changes on their apps before the stable release.

With this, we can say that it’s safe to look out for Android 14 in Q3 or early Q4, so anytime between September to October 2023. However, it is also important to note that third parties like Samsung and Xiaomi will take a bit longer to launch the latest Android OS on their devices since they first need to customise it with their own reskins.

Changes coming to Android 14

Some of the biggest new features coming to the upcoming OS are improved accessibility and safety.

According to the preview, Android 14 supports non-linear font scaling up to 200 percent. An improvement that targets low-vision users specifically.

“This scaling strategy means that large text doesn’t scale at the same rate as smaller text. Non-linear font scaling helps preserve the proportional hierarchy between elements of different sizes while mitigating issues with linear text scaling at high degrees,” reads the developer preview.

Another improvement, however, one that could be seen as controversial is the fact that Android 14 will block older or outdated apps from being installed.

This change is to better protect users from installing apps that may come laced with malware, specifically ones that target older versions of Android to bypass protections that only exist in newer, updated apps.

While users will still be able to install older apps by launching the command shell, adding a few extra steps will likely stop most Android users from the action. One that could lead to infection as the Google Play Store is infamously crawling with malware.

[Image – CC 0 Pixabay]