The next Android 16 update has landed – here are the 7 biggest features

New AI tools, custom icon shapes, and more

02 Dec 2025, 19:00 · TechRadar

Features By James Rogerson published 2 December 2025

The Google Pixel 10 (Image credit: Philip Berne / Future) Jump To:

Android 16 only debuted back in June, but another major Android update has just landed.

It still falls under the Android 16 banner, but there's quite a lot in this new software package, including various AI features, new customization options, parental controls, and accessibility improvements.

Below, we’ve detailed seven of the biggest new features, which, between them, are likely to make this an update worth downloading immediately.

Note, though, that right now, it's only rolling out to eligible Pixel devices – if you have a phone from another brand, you’ll have to wait longer, and since other companies put their own twists on Android, there’s no guarantee you’ll get these specific features.

1. AI-powered notification summaries

(Image credit: Google)

If you ever feel overwhelmed by messages and other notifications, then Android’s new AI-powered notification summaries could be a big help.

This is basically identical to the ‘Summarize Notifications’ feature on iOS. So, in other words, it will use AI to condense the content of messages and other notifications, so you can get the gist of them at a glance, without having to read all 50 new messages in that group chat, or a paragraph of text that could have been a single sentence.

Of course, as with the similar feature on iOS, this may sometimes get things wrong or miss context, so how much you’ll be able to rely on it remains to be seen. But if nothing else, it should give you a clearer idea of how urgently any given notification requires your attention.

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