Android 12

Android 12 builds on everything you love about Android, and focuses on building a deeply personal phone that adapts to you, developing an operating system that is secure by default and private by design, and making all your devices work better together. link

Android 12 Beta 4 has reached Platform Stability, a milestone that means all app-facing surfaces and behaviors are now final in Android 12. This includes not only the official SDK and NDK APIs, but also final app-facing system behaviors and restrictions on non-SDK interfaces that may affect apps. link

Starting with Android 12 on Pixel devices, you’ll be able to completely personalize your phone with a custom color palette and redesigned widgets. Using what we call color extraction, you choose your wallpaper, and the system automatically determines which colors are dominant, which ones are complementary and which ones just look great. It then applies those colors across the entire OS: the notification shade, the lock screen, the volume controls, new widgets and much more.

Color extraction combined with daily wallpaper changes provides for a nice continuous visual update to the phone. I like the larger clock display on the ambient screen, although I find it a bit displeasing when the clock changes because notifications come in. I imagine I could fix that by not having notifications display on the lock screen.

The Double Tap gesture currently is only available on the Pixel 5 and 4a 5G.

In the Privacy Dashboard (Settings, Privacy, Privacy Dashboard), you’ll see a colorful pie chart and a list of your phone’s permissions below that. Something to note right away is that system apps aren’t included in the chart by default; you need to enable them from the overflow menu on the top-right corner of your screen. The pie chart represents all the permissions accessed by your installed apps over the last 24 hours. link

Scrolling screen shots enable you to capture more than what you currently see on the screen. For example, one scrolls up/down through all the settings and you can now capture one screenshot of all the settings. link

Android 12 will also bring locked folders that are going to be accessible with apps. This way a folder can be secured with the phone’s default locking mechanism to prevent any unauthorized access. Slashgear

At this point, Google is basically done adding new features to the operating system. Going forward, it’s going to be all about squashing bugs and building more stability into the software. As such, we now have a comprehensive idea of what to expect. Android Authority

Recent apps overview has some cool new features. For example, when Instagram shows in overview a share picture share button appears that enables one to save the picture to your phone or share it to another app such as Messaging. A similar thing happens when a URL displays.

App suggestions , which is the feature that changes which app icons appear at the bottom of the home screen based on usage, is not working in beta 4. I've submitted a bug report. **Update:** After installing Beta 4.1 (see below) and restarting the phone app I am now seeing the last recently used app icons, but not the full "app suggestions" functionality.

Exactly two weeks after the last release in the preview program, Android 12 Beta 4.1 is rolling out with much-needed bug fixes on Pixel phones. 9to5Google Fixed some of the big bugs like VPN not working and heads up notifications not working. The update is installed on my Pixel 4a although "optimizing apps" is taking a very long time. Restarted the phone and it looks like the widget sizes changed OR the size is being enforced, which is why they didn't appear.

The final Beta release before the full public release of Android 12 is upon us. If all goes according to expected plan, the final release candidate version of Android 12 will appear on the 8th or the 15th of September. After that, we’ll likely see a Google Pixel 6 event with Android 12 in full effect on October 12 or 19. Slashgear

As predicted above, the release candidate, or beta 5, of Android 12, has been released by Google on September 8, 2021. According to The Verge the official full release of Android 12 may only be a few weeks away. **Update:** Reports now say October 4, 2021 is the release date.

The release candidate is now on my Pixel 4a. Ironically, the release candidate has broken the At A Glance widget. I've found two apps that I use that will not update/install on Android 12: Storm Shield, which is a weather radio app, and Fidelity.

I think the UI changes Google has made in Android 12 is going to be noticeable enough to earn strong negative and positive reactions. Some people are really going to hate it. I personally like the change, to me it makes Android feel more modern and I think the timing was right for the refresh.

Some will find the larger size of controls in quick settings and volume settings to be an annoying, but I think the larger touch space make it easier for people to operate. UI isn't just about appearance but also functionality.