Google recently announced Android 12 for its Pixel series of smartphones, as well as all other Android smartphones, with the update slated to be pushed to the public later this year. The key difference in contrast to Android 11, which is built on Android 10 is the inclusion of an all-new design and a bunch of worthwhile features that can improve overall usability whilst boosting privacy. To cater to users who might want to try the same out prior to the launch, Google offers its beta build program, which got its latest build, Android 12 beta 3.1 today. Now, the new Android 12 TV beta has also been released, bringing with it a couple of new features. Google has also listed some of the key features coming to supported TVs later in 2021.
What Does Android 12 TV Offer?
Google seems to be planning some major upgrades to its Android 12 TV UI, with the highlighting feature of the update being the introduction of native 4K UI rendering, which is different from what previous versions offered, which was just 4K content playback. This will be the first instance of the UI rendering in 4K, as per an XDA Developers report. This is different by quite some extent, as in earlier instances, the UI was rendered in 1080p and was subsequently scaled up to 4K. This should allow for better and sharper visuals, which is a must-have for a good viewing experience. Another new addition to Android TVs will be dynamic refresh rate switching, with developers having been given the option to integrate the same seamlessly so as to allow for seamless switching of frame rates. To add to all of this, the new Android beta build also brings with it an updated Tunnel mode, which, according to Google will make it easier for app developers to support efficient and consistent playback across various devices by reducing the media processing overhead that is in the framework of Android. There are also two new global privacy settings on offer, which allow the user to quite easily toggle access to both camera and microphones. When these toggles are disabled, the applications will not be able to access the audio and video, which is quite similar to what is on offer for the smartphone side of things. For those of you wishing to try this out, the latest build for the TV, Android 12 beta 3 is now on offer as a system update to ADT-3 devices starting today, 27 July.
