Android 14 beta 5 is here, the last beta before the stable launch

Since February, we’ve been seeing developer previews and betas of Android 14, the next major iteration of the world’s most popular operating system. Today, Google has capped off those releases with the final beta — well, finally planned beta, anyway.

Android 14 beta 5 follows Android beta 4.1, which landed towards the end of July. As one would expect, this last beta is filled with fixes and bug squashing. It’s possible there are new or updated features included, but the official changelog makes no mention of any. Once we have the beta installed, we’ll be able to investigate for ourselves.

Google will likely launch the stable version of Android 14 later this month or at the beginning of September. For the record, it launched Android 13 as a stable release on August 15, 2022. It’s doubtful Google would launch this fifth beta and then the stable version only days later, but we suppose it is possible. It’s more likely we’ll see it in September. Android 12 launched in stable form on October 4, 2021, so it’s possible it could take that long.

Remember that launching Android 14 in a stable form doesn’t have much of an effect on the average consumer. It will still be weeks or even months before manufacturers push their own versions of Android 14 to phones.

The first phones we expect to land with Android 14 out of the box are the Google Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro. Barring any unforeseen changes, we expect those phones to drop in early October.