Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
Tl; DR
- Android 16 for television seems almost identical to Android 14, with only light visual adjustments in the settings menu.
- The new features focused on developers include mediaqualitymanager, IAMF Spatial Audio Support and performance optimizations.
- The stable version is expected later this year, and the integration of Gemini is also on the roadmap.
Android 16 officially heads for televisions, but in its current state, it is nothing exciting. Despite the main version version, the latest Android TV update surprisingly has few visual changes, the interface seems almost identical to Android 14 for television. We had a little time on the New Android 16 for the construction of the TV emulator And hardly noticed anything again, although it can be because it is still early in development, and the update should not take place before this year.
The most visible change lies in the main settings menu. Here, Google has introduced a clearer colors between the left menu and the right submenus. The text of the header is now locked in rounded forms, and the icons are on darker circular backgrounds, which helps a little visual clarity, but is not a revolutionary change. The home screen and the fast parameter panel remain intact, and overall, the user interface always feels as static and, frankly, as boring as before.
If you hope to see the expressive and colorful updates that Google takes place on phones and watches with equipment 3, you will be disappointed. There is no dynamic theme of colors, cool animations or something else, really.
Although the visuals are disappointing, there are some improvements under the hood that deserve to be noted. According to official changes to Google for Android 16 for television, developers will have more control over media quality and audio formats:
- MediaqualityManager: Developers can now refine photo profile selections.
- Eclipsa Audio Codec platform: Addes the management of the IAMF space audio format. (The IAMF decoder module from Exoplayer can extend this support to previous platform versions.)
- Various improvements in media reading performance, HDMI-CEC reliability and better optimization for 64-bit nuclei.
However, Android 16 for television is far from final. It is only available in an early emulation construction, and the full version is only expected later this year. This gives Google time to polish things more and add more features. However, we do not think that we are in a major visual overhaul.
Google also recently announced that Gemini arrived on Android TV some time later this year. But for the moment, there is no sign in the current construction of the emulator, and disappointing, it will not be launched first on the Streamer Google TV.
