Google has announced the release of the source code Android 12 under the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). This means that the company has kicked off the new version of the popular mobile operating system, which in the coming months should begin to reach some device models through OTA updates.
In order to give Android 12 an early start in real environments, the first devices to receive it will be Google’s Pixel smartphones. Users will be able to install the system by OTA update or by downloading the corresponding image to the device and entering it manually without having to unlock the boot loader or have to delete the data. According to the vice president of engineering of Google, Dave Burke, at the end of the year it will begin to reach the terminals of partners such as Samsung, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Tecno, Vivo and Xiaomi.
In terms of data and features related to the system, Android 12 has had the contribution of 225,000 users for testing the beta versions. On the other hand, and in the words of Dave Burke, it promises to offer “the biggest design change in the history of Android” thanks to the implementation of the new design language: Material You .
Continuing with design themes, we will find redesigned widgets, the renewal of the notification controls , a simplified immersive mode to offer a more consistent experience in gesture navigation, extended scrolling and the improvement of the home screen.
Android 12 will also have improvements at the performance level, an aspect that was highly criticized in the past, especially when comparing the fluidity it offered with that of iOS (other factors such as the customization layers introduced by the manufacturers come in here). Dave Burke has said that they have reduced the CPU time used by central system services by 22% and the use of large cores by 15%.
Other related items performance- that have been improved are application startup times, optimized input / output for faster application loading, and foreground services optimization to provide a better experience while simultaneously supporting applications. Background applications will not start services to improve performance. The Neural Networks API has been revised to take full advantage of specialized artificial intelligence processors introduced in various terminal models.
Android 12 includes a new central privacy panel that will offer users better visibility and greater control over the applications that access the microphone, camera and location data, while at the security level the system will restrict access to the Device MAC addresses for all non-system applications.
We finished with the addition of native support for decoding animated GIF and WBP files, for AV1 Image File (AVIF) container formats, and for audio playback of up to 24 channels. The news that covers folding devices will arrive with the launch of Android 12.1 .
Having been presented at the time as the “white knight” of free software and a great opportunity for the Linux kernel, Android ended up disappointing the defenders of free software because proprietary re-implementations of the system dominate the market thanks to the permissiveness of the license. Apache. On the other hand, the way Linux is treated within Android has meant that its contribution to GNU / Linux has been little to zero.
