I/O might as well be Google's Super Bowl, but its pregame show happens not hours before the May 19 opening keynote, but a week before: 10 a.m. PT on May 12.
The tech giant announced this year’s episode of The Android Show: I/O Edition in about the briefest way possible: a 15-second YouTube clip.
There is not much to parse in the video, which could make last year’s 29-second Android Show teaser look like a full-length movie in comparison. We see the green bugdroid standing under an overhead light fixture, then turning the light off before it lights up in iridescent hues of blue, purple, and pink, followed by Android’s mascot power-cycling the lamp two more times and undergoing additional color transformations.
The text below predicts that 2026 “is going to be one of the biggest years for Android yet,” which might go a bit beyond what one would expect from Android 17 based only on Google’s announcements to date. Some of the more notable features coming in that update, as disclosed in releases from a first beta in early February through the third beta shipped on March 26:
- Automatically resizing app interfaces for the larger displays of foldable phones and tablets
- Privacy enhancements such as the ability to give an app access to only selected contacts (an area where we’re happy to see Google finally copy Apple)
- A new “bubble” floating-window mode for apps
- Cross-device handoffs from one copy of an app to another, or from an app to its developer’s web interface
- Security upgrades that include post-quantum cryptography.
Google presumably has more in store, and we should get a better sense of what that is on Tuesday, or at the latest, the Tuesday after that. Google's opening I/O keynote begins at 10 a.m. PT on May 19. Watch them both on Google's Android YouTube channel.