It seems that the launch date of the new version of Android TV is soon, as Paul Lammertsma, Senior Developer Relations Engineer at Google, announced in a post on Medium about some of the new features that will come with Android TV 12 and that the launch of the system is imminent.
According to Lammertsma's article, the list of new features that Android TV 12 will bring includes Refresh rate switching, text scaling, and 4K UI support.
First, Android 12 TV supports switching the refresh rate of apps, which enables a more fluid and smooth operation of the content displayed on the TV screen. The user will be able to switch between different frequencies such as multiples of 24, 25, and 30 Hz, which will allow them, for example, to play a video created at 24 frames per second more smoothly by switching to 48 Hz or 120 Hz on supported panels.
Next, Android 12 TV will also allow users to scale the size of the text on the screen, which is useful if you are sitting away from the TV screen for example. Users will be able to choose between Small (scale to 85%), Default (scale to 100%), Large (scale to 115%), and Largest (scale to 130%).
Lastly, Android 12 for TVs provides 4K support for the system user interface. This does not mean here that the operating system will bring support for playing 4K content, as it has been supported for a long time, but rather that the Android user interface elements will be in 4K resolution on the supported devices, to achieve a better user experience on these devices.
In addition to all this, Android 12 TV will also bring the following features to supported devices:
- Microphone and camera indicators to protect user's privacy
- Support for HDMI CEC 2.0
- Tuner HAL 1.1 with DTMB support and performance improvements
- Better protection model with Tuner Service
- Certified API-accuracy for reporting display modes, HDR formats, and surround sound formats
- Microphone and camera toggles
Android TV 12 is currently available as a preview version of the ADT-3 Developer Kit, you can install it via system update from the Settings app, and if you prefer the old method, you can also download and flash the latest image manually.
Although Paul Lammertsma did not include in his article a specific date for the release of Android TV 12, he did tell that the update is coming early this year, and since we are in late March, it can be speculated that Google will release Android 12 in the next few weeks.
Source: 👉 Paul Lammertsma's Medium post
