With the release of Android 16 today, you might have run to your Pixel device to grab the update and start enjoying that really colorful and fun new Material 3 Expressive design that Google showed off prior to I/O last month. Unfortunately, that won’t be a part of today’s stable Android 16 build.
Android 16 Material 3 Expressive Design Update Release: When Google showed off Material 3 Expressive, they followed up that reveal by giving Pixel owners the option to test it at Google I/O through the Android 16 beta program. However, that version of Android 16 is not the version that went stable today and is instead still in beta as Android 16 QPR1.
Android 16 QPR1 is a quarterly platform release, not the initial Android 16 stable release that was released today. In other words, the schedule for QPR1 to go stable and arrive on your phone with Material 3 Expressive is in Q3, likely in September. We’ve known this since QPR1 beta was released, but we just want you to fully understand this.
Google further confirmed this timeline today with a blog post detailing their rollout plans for Android 16 for the rest of this year. In the image below, you can see that Android 16 is the “MAJOR SDK RELEASE” that dropped today. In Q3 of 2025, they plan to then issue a “Features only” update, followed by a Q4 2025 “MINOR SDK RELEASE.”
They added to the image by stating, “The Q3 update in-between the API releases is providing much of the new visual polish associated with Material Expressive, and you can get the Q3 beta today on your supported Pixel device.”
So again, today’s Android 16 release is not the Material 3 Expressive update. If you’d like to test it, you can sign-up for it through the Android Beta Program (here).
