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Introduction
A year (give or take) has gone by since Google's release of the first Android version devoid of a sweet name, so you know what that means, right? Android 12 is here - well, "here" on Google Pixel phones and nowhere else, but still. Despite continuing with the 'boring' naming scheme, the company has packed quite a lot of new stuff into this iteration of its mobile operating system, more than we've been used to lately, so we took a deep dive and explore what's new in Android 12 - features that are live today on Pixels and of which some may eventually make it to a few or more other devices running Google's OS.
Like its predecessors, Android 12 went through months of iterative development, with a bunch of developer preview builds making way for public betas and now it's time for the 'final' release to drop. While Android 11 didn't really introduce any major groundbreaking features, Android 12 comes with the biggest redesign in years - an entirely new paradigm of approaching the user interface, through its theme engine that dynamically adjusts all UI elements based on the wallpaper you've chosen.
This is auto-customization at its finest, and we'll definitely start this review by looking at that. But that's not all - Google has packed other new things into the release as well. Animations have been redone to feel more fluid, motion on screen is smoother, there's a new Privacy Dashboard, indicators for when apps are accessing the mic or camera, the ability to share approximate location information only, support for scrolling screenshots, new conversation widgets, and of course the notification shade has been redesigned - that's a meme at this point because it happens with every new Android release. This time around, however, there's also a very big redo of the Quick Settings tiles to go along with it.
Android 12 new features at a glance:
- Automatic theming system based on your chosen wallpaper
- New Material You design language throughout the OS and Google apps
- New widget picker in the Pixel Launcher, with new widgets for Google apps
- Redesigned Quick Settings with integrated smart home controls
- Fresh new lock screen and Always-on Display look
- Universal on-phone search in the app drawer
- Easy link sharing from Recents
- Extra Dim screen setting, improvements for picture-in-picture and auto-rotate
- Support for scrolling screenshots
- New Power menu, new setup wizard, and new emoji
- Improved performance and fluidity
- New Privacy Dashboard, camera and mic usage indicators
Note that all of the new features we are discussing in this review are currently available for Pixels only, and as always, it's up to the other Android device makers if they adopt all of them or a small subset (or anything in between). So while we are very curious to explore what's new in the latest version of the OS, we don't know how many of these things will ever launch on handsets that aren't made by Google. This has always been the state of Android updates, and we're putting this out in the open so you don't have unrealistic expectations.
As usual, expect Android skins that stay close to stock to eventually incorporate most of these features, while the heavy ones that stray far from what Google does are the least likely to get the user-facing stuff. That said, the under-the-hood improvements should theoretically be there for everybody once Android 12 updates start rolling out en masse.
That's it for the introduction, we invite you to join us over the next few pages as we take a look at everything that's new in Android 12.
This review has been based on Android 12 beta 5 (a.k.a. the Release Candidate), which was the most recent release at the time of publishing. Google is yet to seed the Final release to even Pixel phones so will revisit all chapters making sure their content is up to date and relevant to what's available in the Final release.
Auto themes: Material You design
Themes have long been an integral part of most Android skins out there, and yet they've all taken the same approach, which is basically "have a theme store, allow theme developers to post their stuff there and phone users to download and install their works". That's all fine and dandy if you love scrolling through endless lists of possibilities, but what if you want customization without all the work that entails? What if you want some kind of automagic "it just works" personalization of your device's looks?
That's exactly what Google is delivering with Android 12. The system uses color extraction to determine the dominant and complementary in your current wallpaper and then uses those (along with other matching colors) to magically auto-create a custom theme on the fly. This completely alters the system-wide color palette, widgets, everything across the entire OS: the notification shade, the lock screen, the volume controls, the widgets, the launcher, the Settings menu - they all change.
It's a straightforward idea, really, if you think about it, but one that undoubtedly requires a lot of processing power behind the scenes to make things feel this seamless in operation. Google has a new name for the resulting design language: Material You.
It's easy to see where that comes from. Material Design was introduced by Google to Android many years ago, and it's been through a few iterations since. With Material You, the focus is on the easy automatic customization described above. But of course, that's not all of it - Google has subtly redone fonts, boxes, menu items, and the likes to make for a more modern look. And it works. If we dare say so ourselves - Android 12 is by far the best-looking Android version yet.
Manually tweaking
Diving a bit deeper reveals that while the point here is for everything to work automagically, you can manually alter things. In fact, there's an entire section in Settings called Wallpaper & style that lives for that sole purpose. Here you can change the wallpaper, and if you hit that button, you'll be treated to the interface of Google's Wallpapers app, which has been fully integrated into Settings. It has a bunch of categories to pick from, each with a lot of wallpapers inside, but you can also tap the icon at the top right of the screen when you're browsing a category - this will make the phone automatically switch to a new wallpaper from that list every day.
Wallpaper picker
The default for colors is "Wallpaper colors," which does what we described above, but you also have the choice to go with "Basic colors" and pick from four options. The color you choose will become the main one in the newly created theme (think OnePlus' "accent color" from back in the day). "Wallpaper colors" can have just one palette option under it, or up to four, depending on the wallpaper, by the way. The first one on the left is the automatically applied one, but if you get more options, you can also instantly switch to a new color palette from here without going into the "Basic colors" section.
Wallpaper & style section
Finally, in this section, you have the Themed icons setting, which is labeled as being in beta still. This will attempt to create custom app icons on the fly based on your current theme - with varying degrees of success, we'd say. In short, the "beta" label is very much warranted in our view, but we do hope this evolves into something that works better and with more icons. Because icons/icon packs are so far something that isn't touched by Google's new automagical customization system, and it would be a very interesting thing if it did. As things are now, if you use "Themed icons," you'll get what it says on the tin, but only for a subset of your app icons. Right now, it seems that only Google apps get the treatment.
Themed icons
Those will all have the same colors, which is neat. However, it creates a bigger disparity with the icons that didn't get themed. This results in a very odd look unless you are lucky enough to only use apps with icons themed in this manner. If you find yourself with a set of themed icons, we can't overstate how great-looking the design consistency is.
Of course, there's still a "Dark theme" - this works with the auto-theming system, making backgrounds dark or light based on your choice. This setting is confusingly found in no less than three different places in Settings: Wallpaper & style, Display, and Accessibility. Whereas in Wallpapers & style, you can only toggle it on or off, in the other two spots, you have the option to schedule it too. This level of redundancy is a bit much even for Google.
Themed apps
The auto-theming in Android 12 goes beyond just parts of the system like the notification shade and Settings and such. Google apps have slowly been updated to incorporate the auto themes, which are more or less subtle depending on the app. We especially like how Gboard, Google's keyboard app, automatically receives a new theme when a new wallpaper is applied, in line with the system theme.
But it's far from the only one - Gmail, Keep, Calendar, Meet, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Calculator, Clock, Lens, Chrome, Contacts, Camera, Messages are all covered, and we assume it's only a matter of time before Google gets round to updating all of its apps to take advantage of the auto theming system.
Gboard automatically applies the Material You theme
This obviously makes for a very consistent look across the OS and Google Apps, and that's praiseworthy for sure, but there's an interesting side effect of this strategy, which is that third-party apps now look a bit out of place.
App developers can tie into the auto-theming to extract the color palette used and apply it to their own apps. While Google will definitely showcase how this could work in an ever-growing list of its own apps, we think it will be at least a few weeks (or months) until you'd be able to see all of your apps magically change looks every time you set a new wallpaper.
That seems to be Google's idea, though. Still, as with all things that require third-party Android developers to 'bite in', we wouldn't bet on any significant part of this vision ever coming to fruition. Especially if Android 12's Material You auto-theming never makes it to any of the skins of the big device makers.
The whole point of having a very integrated design language is lost if not everyone plays along - the more apps adhere to the system, the more the ones that don't stand out, and not in a good way. This could act as a way to twist the developers' arms into adding the functionality. Still, Google's tried this a few times before with Material Design and its successors, and to this day, it hasn't had a ton of success in convincing developers to all go with a similar design language. Maybe this time's the charm? Sure, but then again, maybe not.
When it comes to Google's own apps, though, everything looks very consistent, and it's not just about the apps grabbing the same color hues from the wallpaper as the system bits. Material You is also an evolution of the company's overall design language, now reaching new heights of maturity.
More Material You Google apps
Obviously, some apps will be changed more than others when it comes to looks. And even if you're running Google's suite on a phone that isn't a Pixel with Android 12, you'll still see subtle design improvements from the new Material You theme - just without the color matching (as portrayed in the image above).
The floating action button is no longer round, now taking on a more squircly shape, with a gentle color highlight around it. This goes for the buttons in the bottom bar too, they no longer show which section you're in by having the icon be a different color. Instead, the icon is filled and surrounded by a colored oval. Ovals are the new rectangles; in fact: in Gmail, that's the shape of the expanded Compose floating action button, as well as the shape of the search box up top.
Widgets
Widgets can also benefit from auto-theming, and again those for Google apps are on the front line. The Widgets API has been improved for Android 12, which means you can now natively interact with checkboxes and radio buttons and switches in a widget - this should make the experience more seamless.
The widget picker offers responsive previews for differently sized widgets. The new API supports dynamic coloring by tying into the Material You theming engine, allowing the widgets to adapt to the wallpaper.
New widget picker, new widgets
Google has created and updated a bunch of widgets with the Material You looks for its various apps, and they all share the same striking new design - as well as the automatic color customization, of course. They all have rounded corners, too.
Redesigned Quick Settings and notification shade
It can't be a new Android release without Google tweaking the notification shade somehow, can it? This is such a meme at this point but obviously based on fact. Case in point: Android 12 tweaks the looks of the notification shade. Surprised? You really shouldn't be.
What is perhaps more surprising is that this time around, the Quick Settings tiles have been revamped too. Google Pay and Home Controls now reside here, too, having been moved from the Power menu in a rather confusing manner. After all, these were only added to the Power menu last year in Android 11 and were a big new feature then, and now they're gone from there and into the Quick Settings screen. Okay, Google, we definitely needed yet another way to access the Assistant - which is what you can do now with a long press of the Power button (though thankfully this is opt-in, so if you don't change that setting, you'll get a plain old Power menu instead).
Device controls in Quick Settings
The Quick Settings tiles are now huge, and as a result, you only see four of them when first swiping down the notification shade. This may make for a nicer design, but functionally it's definitely a step back from how things used to be. Form over function, as they say. Even when fully expanding the Quick Settings screen by swiping down again, you only get to see eight tiles, which isn't a lot - consider that you already get six tiles after the first swipe in some Android skins. Anyway, it's a love it or hate it affair, this, for sure.
A new thing is that the Wi-Fi tile is now labeled Internet, and this one tile basically aggregates the Wi-Fi and mobile data settings into one. Because the tiles are huge now, there's room for an icon to the left of the text, which tells you what you're connected to (the Wi-Fi network's name shows up when you further expand the Quick Settings tiles). Tapping on the tile pops up an Internet menu at the bottom of your screen, where you can quickly connect to another Wi-Fi network, as well as turn mobile data and Wi-Fi on or off.
New Quick Settings tiles and notification shade
The notification shade itself has differently rounded corners now (because why not), and the notification categories are easier to notice because of the redesign. Additionally, suppose you mark a given conversation as "priority". In that case, the Pixel Launcher will pop up a question asking you if you want to add a conversation widget to your home screen for that contact. Also, apps can now show animated images in notifications, and they can let you send images when you reply from the notification shade.
Lock screen and Always-on Display
The lock screen has been altered by Google's new design philosophy too, but not necessarily in functionality per se. Instead, the main change is that you see a huge clock when you don't have any notifications, and this becomes smaller when notifications are waiting for you - it's a subtle nudge letting you know the current state of affairs.
That big/small clock dichotomy expands to the always-on display as well, so you're never in doubt about whether something's waiting for you to attend to or not.
New lock screen clock shown when no notifications are present
Above the clock, you get the day of the week and date info, as well as weather conditions and temperature. At the bottom of the screen, centered, sits the battery capacity on the AOD. This disappears on the lock screen for some reason (and it's not shown as part of the status bar on the lock screen either).
Pixel Launcher gains on-device search in the app drawer
The Pixel Launcher gets an interesting search function in the app drawer. This search bar no longer only searches through app names - it still does that, yes, but it also offers you results from the entirety of your device, so it surfaces contacts, conversations, tips, widgets, shortcuts, and even settings. Not just that, but for some apps, you have quick access to a subset of their features: search for Camera and not only can you jump to the app but also quickly take a video or take a selfie.
New phone search in Pixel Launcher's app drawer
All of this works thanks to a new API called AppSearch, which is an offline on-device library that third-party app developers can use too if they so choose. There's also a "Search on Google" bar that you can tap below all the surfaced stuff if what you need isn't actually on your phone. It's a nice expansion of the app drawer search functionality, though we're not sure how many people will even know it's there.
Sure, the bar says "Search your phone and more," which is a hint, but just that - a hint, and one that's easily missed. We also have to wonder why the Google search bar on the home screen can't do the same thing - that one defaults to a Google search instead and that there are two search bars in the Pixel Launcher that do very different things is rather inconsistent in our book. Then again, if they both did the exact same thing, we probably would have called them redundant.
Perhaps the perfect solution, then, is to integrate what these two search bars do and have one that can find things on your phone but also on the internet. That seems like a much better option, as it requires zero thinking on the user's part ("wait, where do I want to search > which bar should I use then?") and should ideally "just work". Hopefully, that will arrive in Android 13; we're stuck with this disjointed system until then. None of this is to say that we're not happy with the on-device search bar in the app drawer - indeed, it has more (and more useful) functionality than before. It's just that it could have been ever so slightly better if searching Google didn't take an extra step.
Easily copy links, app hibernation
In the Recent apps screen, when the focus is on an app that contains a URL - the best example for this is Chrome or another browser, obviously - you'll get a small button in the top right part of the app's snapshot. Clicking this button lets you quickly copy or share that URL - handy! If there's an image or video in view, you can also tap on that to easily share it too.
Easy access to link and image sharing in Recents
App hibernation is a new feature that is pretty self-explanatory - it "hibernates" apps that you haven't used in several months so that they use less storage. Their permissions are all revoked, too, when they go in this state. You can manually place an app in hibernation or let the system automatically do it once enough time has passed since you last used an app. You can take an app out of hibernation by simply using it again. Alternatively, you can go into Settings and toggle hibernation off or on manually.
Extra dim screen, new auto rotate behavior
If you ever found yourself trying to use your phone at night in pitch-black darkness and thought the display was still too bright even on the lowest brightness setting, Google has something that you'll really like baked into Android 12. It's called Extra Dim, and it's a new Quick Settings tile that will do just what it implies. Tap on it to turn your screen extra dim; tap again to take things back to the way they used to be. You can also find this in Accessibility settings.
If you long press on the tile, you get an adjustable intensity slider, as well as an option to keep the setting on (or not) after the device restarts. You can also enable button shortcuts for it - pressing and holding both volume keys will toggle Extra Dim on and off if you wish. In our book, this is a handy feature, and we hope every Android device maker out there implements it - in recent times, we found a bunch of OLED screens on various phones not being as dim as we would've wanted them to be on the lowest brightness setting. This fixes that.
Extra dim
Android 12 introduces a new behavior for automatic rotation of the screen. It's no longer a simple on/off switch whether the screen should auto-rotate; you now also have the option to Enable Face Detection.
If you turn this on, the phone will use the front-facing camera to improve rotation accuracy - the prime example use case would be if you're using the phone in bed and you're on your side. Without this setting, the OS would think you want the screen rotated into landscape, but with this setting, it will keep it in portrait as that's what you actually need.
Images of your face used for this feature are never stored or sent to Google, the company notes. If you think you've heard of this before, you're not wrong - some Android skins have had similar functionality for a while now; it's just built right into Google's OS this time around.
Scrolling screenshots, picture-in-picture improvements
Another feature that most third-party Android skins have had for years and the stock build lacked is support for scrolling screenshots. After a few false starts in prior betas, this is finally part of Google's Android build with Android 12. Unsurprisingly, it does what you'd expect it to. When you capture a screenshot, you get the "Capture more" option popping up at the bottom. Tap that, and you can select how much of the current window to screenshot. Better late than never, then.
Scrolling screenshots
The Picture-in-picture window has some improved functionality too. Now when you single tap a PiP window, you'll see controls (previously, a single tap expanded the window and showed controls). If you double-tap a PiP window, this will toggle between its current size and the maximum PiP size (before, a double-tap left PiP and put you into full-screen mode).
New Picture-in-picture behavior
Resizing the window can also be done with pinch to zoom, and exiting PiP mode also has smoother animations now. Finally, you can "stash" the window by dragging it to the left or right edge of the screen. To "unstash" it, either tap the visible part or drag it out.
Car unlocking
Like Apple, Google wants you to use your phone to unlock your car, and for this purpose, it's partnered up with several smartphone and car makers to establish an industry standard. This can work through NFC, in which case you have to tap your phone to your car's door. Alternatively, it can also work over UWB for devices that have that - and then you don't even have to take your phone out of your pocket to unlock the car. Once you have a virtual car key, you can share it with friends and family members (when they borrow the vehicle). This should arrive on BMW cars first.
Power menu, Google Assistant settings
As we mentioned before, the Power menu no longer houses all the device controls as it used to, those having moved to Quick Settings. So what you're left with is a pretty barebones Power menu, with four circular options popping up in the middle of your screen once you've long pressed the Power button: Emergency, Lockdown, Power off, and Restart. Alternatively, you can set it so that Google Assistant pops up on a long press instead.
New Power menu
In Gesture Settings, you can now turn off swiping up from a bottom corner to invoke the Google Assistant, which may come in handy if you're baffled by all the different options you have to engage it. Maybe you set the long press on the Power button to get the Assistant, and you don't need this too? Maybe you accidentally invoked the Assistant a bunch of times with this swipe? Well, in either case, you can now get rid of it.
Turn off swipe up from a bottom corner for Google Assistant
Easter egg, setup wizard, emoji
The traditional easter egg is still accessible by going to Settings > About phone and tapping on the Android version field a few times. This year, the easter egg is a giant analog clock widget in the middle of the screen. But see, this is no ordinary clock widget - it's Material You themed, of course, and imitates an actual new clock widget design that you can use on your home screen. If that doesn't make a point about how important Material You is to the Android 12 release in Google's view, we don't know what will.
The easter egg
There's a newly redesigned setup wizard for Pixels, too, one that uses the Material You design principles. Nothing has changed in terms of functionality; it just received a new coat of paint.
Finally, as usual, there are new emojis in this build - more than 1,000 of them have been updated, in fact.
Fluidity
Looks aren't everything - everyone knows that Google included. So looks aren't the only thing changing in Android 12. The company has done some under-the-hood work to reduce CPU time needed for the core system services by up to 22% and reduced the use of big cores by the system server by 15%.
Additionally, it's redone the animations and made elements in motion on the screen feel smoother. The lock screen clock changes dynamically based on whether you have any notifications or not, and interactions with the OS have been simplified. All of this is to say - Android 12 feels smoother and more fluid than any version before it. And we don't mean that it does so on the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro - in fact, we've used a Pixel 4 XL from 2019 for this review to see just how the older hardware would cope with the new software. And the answer is, in a word, flawlessly. The phone really does feel smoother and ever so slightly faster in operation than it did before.
Privacy dashboard
Android 12 wants to convince you that it's big on privacy, and so it features a brand new Privacy dashboard in Settings. The aim here is for you to have more input into which apps are accessing your data and more controls so you can make informed choices about how much of your data apps are allowed to get.
New Privacy menu with Privacy dashboard
The Privacy dashboard is a single unified view into your permissions settings and what data is being accessed, how often, and by which apps. You can easily revoke any permissions from here if you want to. The highlighted permissions are those for apps to access your location, camera, and mic, but there's a list of all permissions hidden behind a button at the bottom.
Camera and mic usage indicators
Speaking of the camera and mic usage, you also get little visual indicators on the right side of your status bar when an app is using these. So you know when they're actively being accessed too, not just after the fact through the Privacy Dashboard.
Some Quick Settings toggles let you quickly disable access to the camera and microphone for all apps from that point forward.
Approximate location
As for location, you can choose to share only your approximate location with some apps, those that you deem unworthy of getting access to your exact location (a weather app, for example). This choice is an additional option on the location permission pop-up that you see when an app requests location access.
Private compute core
Android 12 features what Google calls a Private Compute Core (PCC), which has the aim of keeping your information private from several AI-powered features like Live Caption, Now Playing, and Smart Reply.
The PCC is a secure partition within the OS, similar to those used to store passwords and biometric data. The aforementioned machine learning features will only live on that partition, not making contact with the internet and not even interacting with other parts of the OS, to ensure that sensitive data about you never leaves your device. The protections in the PCC are open source and thus fully inspectable by third parties that may wish to do so. The PCC section in Privacy settings also lets you turn off keyboard suggestions and the other features of on-device machine learning.
Furthering the improved privacy front, whenever an app accesses your clipboard, you'll see a pop-up toast message telling you that's what's happened. Oh, and Bluetooth scanning can now happen without requiring Location permission.
Other under the hood improvements
As always, with the new release, Google has worked to improve Android under the hood as well, to make app developers' lives easier. For example, Android 12 has a splash screen API, enabling a new launch animation for all apps, including an into-app motion at launch, a splash screen with the app's icon, and a transition to the app itself. This standardizes the design and functionality of splash screens across the OS, and developers are free to use the new API to make their splash screens be in line with Google's.
Starting with Android 12, Google has introduced a new standard called "performance class". Each such class defines a set of device capabilities that goes beyond Android's baseline requirements. Each version of Android has its own corresponding performance class, and each Android device has to declare the class that it supports.
A device can upgrade to a newer Android version without updating its performance class, even if it doesn't meet the new version's performance class requirement. Google wants this performance class to be an easy way to group devices together without relying on a particular Android version. We assume that this could be used by app developers to enable/disable specific features based on a device's performance class.
Availability and conclusion
There are new OS version updates that change a lot of things under the hood, there are those that change a lot of user-facing stuff, and then there are those that don't change much at all, focusing on small improvements here and there. Android 11 was definitely in that last camp. Still, Android 12 is very different, introducing one of the biggest user interface overhauls ever, and at the same time, adding a lot of small new features and improvements.
That's all fine and dandy, but focusing so much on looks means there's a big chance that owners of anything but Google's Pixels will never see most of what makes Android 12 great... ever. Samsung has already outed the first beta of its upcoming One UI 4 skin based on Android 12, and it looks almost entirely like One UI 3 based on Android 11. We fully expect this to be the case for other heavy skins too. And that's probably a shame because the auto-theming system based on the wallpaper colors is one of those simple ideas that work amazingly well in practice and improve the user experience.
Android 12, the way we described it in this review, is now available for the Pixels Google still supports and will be found on the upcoming Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro from the day they launch. Other Android device makers will issue their updates in the coming weeks and months, and in fact, some have already announced timely rollouts, but as usual, if you don't have a Pixel, you may be missing out on a lot, if not most, of the features that we've presented.
If your phone has a light skin that's close to stock, then we assume there's a chance you could get almost all of the new features. Think Motorola, Nokia, those sorts of skins. If you have a Samsung, Xiaomi/Redmi/Poco, even an Oppo or a OnePlus (now that OxygenOS seems to be slowly on the way out), you may never see Google's huge UI change in action unless you get yourself a Pixel.
But Pixels are far from ubiquitous, as Google's still only selling them in a handful of markets, so for most people, Android 12 "as Google intended it" will only serve as a distant showcase of what's possible. It won't be 'the update coming soon to your device' for most smartphones out there, and that's sad because it really is one of the most exciting and fun to use new Android versions in years.
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