1 year ago
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Android 14 has been in the beta phase for many months now, and Google initially made us believe that the final, stable release would come out at some point in August, just like it did last year with Android 13. Not so, however, as some more betas were added to the release cycle, at which point pretty much everyone in the tech world assumed the stable version would be coming in September.
Well, about that. Yesterday was Labor Day in the US, and that means a Google software update should be coming out today (these are generally going out on the first Monday of each month unless that's a US holiday, like yesterday, in which case they get delayed to the next day). But it may not be Android 14. Rumor now has it that Google has delayed the stable release to October, at the very last minute.
Hearing now that the source code release of Android 14 has been delayed to next month.
This decision seems to have been made very late, as even OEMs were anticipating that the release would be today.
OEMs are now being told that vulnerabilities detailed in the Android 14… pic.twitter.com/I137j0F0x5
As you can see, it is now allegedly scheduled to come out on October 4, which incidentally is the date of Google's next big hardware announcement, when it's expected to fully unveil the Pixel 8, Pixel 8 Pro, and Pixel Watch 2. That would create a rather unprecedented situation - new Google releases are usually launched at least a month, if not two, ahead of the new hardware.
It's entirely unclear why this delay happened, but things haven't been going well in the Android 14 world for a few weeks now - we suspected something was off when Google hastily released a not-before-anticipated fifth beta. Now it looks like whatever the underlying problem is, it hasn't been fully addressed (or fixed) yet.
Apparently, even Google's phone making partners thought the release would come today, hence why some of them - thinking of OnePlus here - even announced their own Android 14 stable releases coming later this month. We aren't sure what will happen to that promise now.
Of course, this is all a rumor, and Google still has time to prove it wrong by releasing Android 14 before October 4. Let's see what happens.
English (US)