Like last year, Google launched the developer preview of its upcoming Android in February. I’ll always dig through the latest Android release to find what’s new. Google’s blog post on Android 14 DP1 makes it sound like there aren’t changes (to be fair, it’s aimed at developers), but as always, there are a LOT of new features and changes.
Since this digging is a very involved process, and for my own sanity, if you want to see what’s new in Android 14 DP1. You can check the complete details which are mentioned below.
- With this update, “Fast pair” settings have been re-added to Settings > Connected devices > Connection preferences. These settings used to be available in early Android 13 previews but were removed in Beta 3. Fast Pair, short for Google Fast Pair Services, is currently part of Google Play Services. Android 13 introduced a new “Nearby” Mainline module to AOSP that contains the code necessary to scan and pair nearby Fast Pair devices.
- Under Settings > System > Multiple users, there’s now an “allow guest to use phone” toggle that lets you control whether the guest profile can make phone calls/send text messages. If you enable it, your call history is shared with the guest user.
- In Developer options, there’s now a “disable child process restrictions” toggle. Enabling this disables the monitoring of so-called “phantom processes”, child processes forked by app processes that the framework couldn’t track the lifecycle of.
- This setting is simply a more accessible way to disable phantom process monitoring, which previously required flipping a feature flag that’s only visible on userdebug builds or flipping that same flag via ADB.)
- Also in Developer Options, “NFC verbose vendor debug log” and “NFC NCI unfiltered log” have been added to allow for capturing more detailed logs on NFC packets. Enabling these requires a reboot.
- In Settings > About phone, the “device details” section now has an EID option. You previously had to tap “SIM status” to see the EID. Also, the EID and IMEI are now hidden on this page by default. You have to tap the item to show the value.
Android 14 Developer Preview OTA Images:
- Pixel 7 Pro: Factory Image — OTA
- Pixel 7: Factory Image — OTA
- Pixel 6a: Factory Image — OTA
- Pixel 6 Pro: Factory Image — OTA
- Pixel 6: Factory Image — OTA
- Pixel 5a: Factory Image — OTA
- Pixel 5: Factory Image — OTA
- Pixel 4a (5G): Factory Image — OTA
Android 14 is introducing a predictive back gesture that will let you preview where you’re going when you swipe back. In Android 13, you could only preview swipes back to the home screen. In Android 14 DP1, you can preview cross-task and in-app transitions! Here’s a demo:
- Android 14 will now warn you when you install an app that targets API level 27 or lower (ie. Android 8.1 or older). The threshold that triggered this warning was previously set at API level 22 (Android 5.1) in Android 10.
- Android 14 by default will also block you from installing any app that targets API level 22 (Android 5.1 Lollipop) or lower. You can ignore the warning when you install an app that targets API 23 – 27.
- Android 14 adds key layout files for the Sony Playstation DualSense Edge Controller (Vendor_054c_Product_0df2.kl) and the SteelSeries Stratus+ (Vendor_1038_Product_1434.kl). These define the mapping between button presses and Android input events.
- For the Sony Playstation Dualsense Edge Controller in particular, however, your device will also need new hid-playstation kernel patches to properly support the controller. This is because the DualSense Edge has a new product ID, so the existing hid-playstation driver won’t work.
- Sony has backported patches to GKI kernel android11-5.4 and later. You can see the work in AOSP under the “hid-playstation-2022” tags: android-review.googlesource.com/q/%22hid-plays
- There’s a MAJOR new privacy feature hidden in Android 14 DP1. Y’all know the Photo Picker from Android 13? A lot of apps don’t use it, but soon, they may not have a choice. You can use it to select photos/videos you want apps to access, even if they ask for the full gallery!