The first beta of Android 14 is out for Pixel 4a 5G devices and newer. Sadly, the Pixel 4a is no longer eligible for the update. If you’re on Android 13 QPR3 Beta 2, you can move to Android 14 Beta 1 without wiping your data, later beta of QPR3 might not let you do that. You can check the complete release notes and features which is mentioned below.
Android 14 Beta 1 Fixed Issues:
- Fixed an issue that caused the status bar to display with the wrong color while making a phone call on devices with display cutouts.
- Fixed system issues that sometimes caused devices to crash and reboot.
- Fixed an issue that caused empty message bubbles to display in some cases.
- When your app requests visual media permissions, if the user grants partial access to their visual media library (Photos/Videos) then later denies this access, your app no longer freezes, flickers, or stops asking for the permission.
- If your app uses a custom visual media picker and the user chooses to grant partial access to their visual media library, your app’s picker now immediately shows the items that the user selected.
Android 14 Beta 1 Known Issues:
- An issue with the Credential Manager platform APIs causes instability in apps that use them. A fix is available in the latest preview version of the Android 14 SDK, which developers can install using Android Studio. Developers who previously installed a preview version of the Android 14 SDK should completely uninstall the previous version and then reinstall the SDK to apply the fix.
- After entering and exiting picture-in-picture (PiP) mode, an issue with the system UI causes the screen to flicker when any apps are launched.
- An issue with the system UI sometimes causes the screen to flicker when a video is playing in picture-in-picture mode.
- In some cases, the video continues playing in the background even after closing an app if the video was playing in picture-in-picture mode when it was closed.
- A video that is playing in picture-in-picture mode stops playing abruptly if the back gesture is used within the PiP settings screens.
- When using a device with a work profile, the Google Play Store app in the work profile hangs or crashes when launched.
- A blank screen displays after selecting the “Message” option for a recent caller in the Google Phone app.
- After taking pictures with the Google Camera app, opening the latest picture from the thumbnail in the app briefly displays a green-colored shade over the image.
- An issue with Android Studio causes a SecurityException to be thrown when attempting to run your app or apply incremental changes any time other than the first time. To work around this issue, fully uninstall your app and then reinstall it on the test device before running your app again. A fix for this issue is in included in Android Studio Giraffe | 2022.3.1 Canary 4 or higher.
- User restrictions set by DPC admins are not being enforced in Settings.
Android 14 Beta 1 Added Enhanced PIN Privacy
- Android 14 Beta 1 adds the “enhanced PIN privacy” feature that we saw in Android 13 QPR3 Beta 2. This feature “disable[s] animations while entering the PIN”, making it harder for shoulder surfers to watch you enter your PIN.
Android 14 Beta 1 Adds Transparent Navigation Bar
- Android 14 Beta 1 adds a “transparent navigation bar” toggle to Developer Options that “make[s] [the] navigation bar background color transparent by default.”
- The ring and notification volume sliders are still separated, thankfully.
- Google rolled out a server-side change to users on Android 14 DP2 that toggled the flag the separate these two volume sliders, and it’s good to see that they haven’t reverted it for users on Beta 1 (yet).
Some Other Features:
- The contrast level slider in Settings > Accessibility > Color and Motion has been removed.
- Under Settings > System > Developer options, there’s a new “enable Bluetooth LE audio Allow List” toggle. This toggle lets you choose which remote devices are allowed to connect via the LE audio profiles. This is likely only for testing.
- The “select photos” option has been renamed to “select photos and videos” and has been bumped to the top of the list in the permission dialog.
- If you’re wondering what this “select photos and videos” feature does.
- Android 14 Beta 1 ships with the June 2023 Google Play System Update version out of the box, as well as SDK extension version 6.
- When you try to change the system language (locale) in Android 14 Beta 1, you’ll be shown a confirmation dialog before the locale is changed.
- Here’s a look at the fancy new animations that’ll play when you enter your PIN. A different shape is shown as you enter each number (provided you haven’t toggled “enhanced PIN privacy”). This is disabled by default in Beta 1, so I manually enabled it.
- In Beta 1, you can once again enable a sideloaded app’s Accessibility Service by going to its app info page, tapping the three-dot menu, and selecting “allow restricted settings.” This option was missing in DP2.
- The “Nearby” chip has returned to the share sheet in Android 14 Beta 1. It was missing in DP2 because the new IntentResolver-managed share sheet didn’t implement that chip.