Your Android phone is getting 3 huge upgrades - and Google just ditched yearly updates

"Google has announced that it's moving away from a single, yearly update of its Android mobile operating system to more frequent releases throughout the year. To kick things off, the company revealed a roundup of updates that includes a second Android 16 release coming to eligible Pixel devices, plus new features coming to Android as a whole. The Android 16 release includes features such as AI-powered notification summaries, a notification organizer, expanded parental controls, and connected displays."

"One of the most intriguing new additions is Call Reason, a way to indicate that a call is critical. With Call Reason, which Google says is "coming soon," if you're making a call to a saved contact, you can flag it as urgent. The call recipient will see a small bubble announcing "It's urgent!" while the call is ringing and a similar flag on the call history if they miss the call."

Google is shifting Android away from a single yearly release toward multiple, more frequent updates throughout the year. A second Android 16 release will roll out to eligible Pixel devices alongside platform-wide feature updates. Android 16 adds AI-powered notification summaries, a notification organizer, expanded parental controls, and support for connected displays. A new Call Reason feature will let callers mark calls as urgent and surface an "It's urgent!" bubble while ringing and a flag in call history. An Expressive Calling teardown revealed Pixel-only call-reason labels and an urgent option that can break Do Not Disturb, though current Call Reason capabilities remain unclear.

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