Android 12 is not even out yet, but we already need to talk about Android 12.1, a rumored point release that would presumably arrive shortly after Android 12 and the Pixel 6 hit the market. The current thinking is that Google is working on a pair of Samsung-style foldable Pixel phones, which would ship with a smaller Android release. These are expected to come out—maybe—before the end of the year, development time and chip shortages allowing.
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Dual pane settings are back! [credit: XDA Developers ]
There’s nothing official about the name “Android 12.1,” but the puzzle pieces here aren’t hard to fit together. Every Android release gets an API level for app developers. Unlike the marketing-controlled version number, the API level is designed to be predictable and goes up “1” for each new platform release, regardless of the size of each release. Android 12 is “API level 31,” but Android 13—due out this time next year—was recently bumped to API level 33 in the public Android repository. Google made a space in between Android 12 and 13 for a new release. Everyone is unofficially calling that release “Android 12.1,” following the maintenance release naming conventions Google last used with Android 8.1, which was released in December 2017.
So what’s in Android 12.1? Foldables stuff. XDA Developers’ Mishaal Rahman has a hands-on with some early code, detailing a ton of tablet and foldable-centric features. We want to stress the “early” part of that “early code” description, because everything looks horrible, but we’re here for functionality, not design, right now.
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