Android 16 Arrives For Pixel With Better Security And These Key Upgrades

Owners of contemporary Pixel phones should be pretty happy today. Hot on the heels of Apple's announcements at WWDC, Google is letting loose Android 16 on its Pixel devices. This release brings the new Material 3 Expressive quasi-redesign, along with a veritable host of minor useful features that in combination add up to a sizable upgrade.

Let's kick things off with the most impactful change, in the form of the Material 3 Expressive design. Google calls the new UI/UX theme a revision rather than an overhaul, as it seemingly doesn't move a lot of UI elements around but rather adds tweaks to existing ones, both obvious and subtle. There are many more animations on user actions like dismissing notifications. The animation design is centered around the theme of "springiness," with visual and tactile bounces. The company talks up 46 studies with 18,000 participants to conclude that users tend to prefer "attributes like playfulness, energy, creativity, and friendliness."


Many visual elements have been made bigger, more visually distinctive, or both. Taste is a personal matter, but the updated UI is definitely more consistent. There's also an emphasis on fonts and typography, and Google's UI team claims the new fonts are more readable at smaller sizes, a welcome tweak for those of us who prefer a denser UI. Likewise, the Quick Settings pull-down can again have more than four items again.

While we're on that topic, there's something to be said about a growing trend to exaggerate visual element sizes in mobile operating systems, along with using less distinguishable icons, often monochromatic. Apple's Liquid Glass had a frosty reception yesterday, and although Material 3 Expressive definitely improves consistency, information density seems to have taken yet another hit. A fair number of phones 6 inches and larger now require substantial scrolling far too often, raising some questions about visual identification when visibility takes precedence over density, and style arguably trumps iconographic distinction.

In what's probably a two-pronged defense against iMessage and Whatsapp, Android 16 now has full RCS group chats. That takes Google's platform to the same functionality level as the two main competitors, offering easy image, video, file sharing, custom stickers, and all the associated goodness. You can customize group names and icons, and mute conversations for a duration of your choosing. Perhaps to help this along, GBoard now supports custom stickers, and Emoji Kitchen lets you easily combine any two emoji into a custom sticker for sharing

You can now pick and choose which of your friends get the VIP treatment, rather literally. You can assign the VIP status to a contact, and you can add relevant information to their profiles like birthdays, email addresses, workplaces, and personal preferences. The phone should pick up on related communications, bring up context-aware information, offer reminders like birthdays, and keep tabs on location when shared. This feature also works across Whatsapp, and additionally you can allow your VIPs to punch through Do Not Disturb mode.

Android 16 also packs a host of security- and scam protection related functionality. When sharing your screen, you'll get a warning if you open a sensitive application like a banking app, and you are reminded to turn off screen sharing after a call is done. Phone security settings can also be disabled during calls, preventing most on-call scams from taking effect. Google Messages will now use on-device AI to spot more scam attempt messages, too. In a related point, Google improved its Find Hub, likely in a bid to rival Apple's quite-complete "Find My" ecosystem. The Find Hub will now include not just your devices, but also people who have their location shared with you, a tweak that makes contextual sense.


The photo and image editor has also gotten some improvements, namely those powered by AI processing. Google says you can tap, circle, or brush zones, and its AI smarts will try and identify objects and/or offer suggestions of what to do in those areas. The Reimagine feature lets you add brand-new elements to a scene, while Auto-Frame offers context-aware expansion for the perfect crop. The Camera app now offers additional hints and on-screen help, too.

There's good news on the accessibility front as well. Android 16 users with Bluetooth LE hearing aids can now opt to use the phone's microphone instead of their earbuds', change ambient sound volume, and switch presets, all from their handset. Expressive Captions can now understand nuance and emotion and tweak the subtitles with all-caps. Surprisingly, it can even understand elongated wordsssss, my precioussss. The Magnifier app now has live search, so you can get information and object identification on your surroundings by just waving your phone around; no need to take a photo.


Using Android on tablets has long been a questionable enterprise, but there's some help on the way. The folks at Mountain View are introducing a full windowing system to Android 16 later this year, thanks to a collaboration with Samsung, no doubt inspired by the Korean giant's long-running DeX functionality.

Last but by no means least, there's finally OS-level support for adaptive refresh rates and HDR screenshots. We've covered a lot of ground on this update (both pertaining to Android 16 in general and Google's June Pixel Drop), so let us know your thoughts in the comments below.