Google Releases Android 14 Developer Preview For Pixel Devices: Here’s Everything That’s New

As Google I/O 2023 fast approaches, the company has made the first Android 14 developer preview available for Pixel device owners. If you have a Pixel 7 Pro, Pixel 7, Pixel 6a, Pixel 6 Pro, Pixel 6, Pixel 5a 5G, Pixel 5, or Pixel 4a (5G), you can get a firsthand experience of the next major Android OS update.

Google is focusing on performance, privacy, security, and user customization with the release of Android 14. The company aims to improve operability across various devices and form factors—including tablets and foldables.

Dave Burke, VP of Engineering, Android said, “Android 14 builds on the work done in Android 12L and 13 to support tablets and foldable form factors.” And to help users and developers “build apps that adapt to different screen sizes, we’ve created window size classes, sliding pane layout, Activity embedding, and box with constraints and more, all supported in Jetpack Compose. With every release, our goal is to make it easier for you to optimize your app across all Android surfaces.”

Additionally, Google is working to optimize the way apps work together in Android 14, enhance system health and extend battery life, while also polishing the overall user experience.

And, as far as customization goes, with Android 14, users will be able to scale up their font to 200%, up from the previous limitation of 130% on Pixel devices, and has acknowledged the issue—where text gets too large; Ergo, starting in Android 14, system will ensure that “a non-linear font scaling curve is automatically applied,” so that text that is already large doesn’t increase at the same pace as smaller text.

Google also promises enhanced security with Android 14. To prevent malware from bypassing security measures in newer Android versions, apps with a targetSdkVersion lower than 23 will be unable to install.

If you’re interested in installing the Android 14 developer preview on your Pixel device, you can download the factory image from this page. However, it is important to note that as this is the first release, there may be bugs present, so it may be best to wait until later versions if you’re not a developer or are unfamiliar with flashing builds.

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