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Don't expect the next preview of Android O until mid-May

Google has released a timeline for when it will release new preview builds of Android O, with the next version not due until mid-May.
By
March 21, 2017

With today’s surprise release of the first Android O developer preview, Google has also posted up a schedule of when it will release its other pre-release versions of the mobile OS. As it turns out, we won’t likely get the second developer preview of Android O until sometime in mid-May.

Before we go any further, we want to remind you that these developer previews that are coming over the next few months are intended, as the name indicates, for app developers. In other words, if you are not currently making Android apps for a living, you might want to stay away from these builds.

With that being said, today’s preview release, which Google labels as an “alpha” build, and the next release in May, which has the “beta” label, is mainly for Google to get feedback from those developers on this early version of Android O. Developers can also use these two early build to make sure their apps are compatible with Android O.

The third developer preview, which Google currently shows is due sometime in mid-June, is when Google will release the final versions of the Android O APIs, along with its official SDK tools for developers. Developers with older apps can also make their final final compatibility tests with Android O Developer Preview 3.

The fourth and final developer preview for Android O is not supposed to happen until sometime after July. It will have the near-final images, and developers can go ahead and publish their Android O-compatible apps to the Google Play Store as alphas and betas, so that consumers can check them out ahead of the final version of the OS.

The current schedule shows that Android O will officially launch sometime in the third quarter of 2017, or between July and September. However, keep in mind that schedules can change between now and those target dates, so it’s possible Google could push back the final build of the OS beyond what their current timeline shows.