Although your Smart TV may still be using Android TV 9 or 10 , Google today launched Android TV 12 , the new version of its operating system for smart TVs that use brands such as Xiaomi, Sony, Philips, Hisense, Panasonic, TCL or TD Systems . We go with all the news.
Google has released several preview and beta versions of Android TV 12 in recent months, and today they finally released the final version. However, although it is the final version, it is still aimed at developers, both for those who develop applications and for manufacturers that integrate them into televisions and players.
Android TV 12 will arrive in 2022 to Smart TVs
Thus, to be able to receive it on devices such as Chromecast with Google TV or compatible Android televisions, we will have to wait at the beginning of 2022. The only device that receives this update this week is the ADT-3 , the player that Google offers to developers to be able to adapt your software to the latest and check if the applications are compatible.
Android TV 12 introduces many changes compared to the previous version. At the level of multimedia content, we found a solution by Google that eliminates the judder in the content we see. The judder are those jerks that you see when, for example, a camera is rotated or moved horizontally. To avoid this, they use refresh rate switching.
For the reproduction we also find a new way for the content to communicate correctly through an API what formats it uses, be it image or sound. Thanks to this, the television can be adapted to display HDR content in a specific format, or a sound format such as Dolby Atmos.
New 4K interface and privacy improvements
In the interface, Google has also introduced some interesting changes. To begin with, we found the rendering of the interface in 4K natively, moving away from the Full HD to which it was rendered until now. The font size can also be changed from the accessibility section, and background blurs have been introduced in the windows.
At the privacy level, now the system shows us indicators and switches of the camera and the microphone , allowing us to activate or deactivate them whenever we want, as well as we can know at all times if they are active or not.
Finally, in HDMI connectivity and tuning, support for HDMI CEC 2.0 has been added, an interface between the frame and the vendors with Tuner Hal 1.1, and better protection for the tuning model.
As we say, we will probably have to wait a few months until we can start enjoying this new version on our televisions. The new version arrives around a month after the launch of Android 12 for mobiles and tablets. While it’s not going to revolutionize the way we use Smart TV, these small improvements will make the end-use experience rounder.