SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 15 — The annual Google I/O conference will be held on May 20 and 21, 2025, at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California. This will be an opportunity to find out more about Android 16, as well as about many other projects and the further integration of artificial intelligence into the Google ecosystem.
Aimed primarily at developers, this annual event sets the stage for Google to unveil its most ambitious projects. While many of these might be surprises, the conference also offers developers and users alike the chance to find out more about the evolution of well-known programmes and platforms, starting with Android.
This year, Android 16 will evidently be on the agenda, even though the previous version of the mobile operating system, Android 15, is still in the process of being deployed by many manufacturers. The conference will provide an opportunity to discover in detail the new features planned for this major update. The main new feature is likely to be Bluetooth Audio Sharing. With Android 16, it will therefore be possible to stream the same music simultaneously to different devices. Note, however, that only owners of a smartphone and peripherals (speakers, headphones), compatible with Bluetooth LE Audio will be able to take advantage of this feature. The operating system will also simplify photo and video sharing by integrating Android’s photo selector directly into applications, to avoid having to systematically authorise access to all the device’s data. Health data sharing should be simplified, too. Finally, Android 16 is expected to feature security improvements, with no further details available at present.
Mixed reality will be another hot topic at this year’s conference, with the much-anticipated presentation of Android XR, an operating system derived from Android but entirely dedicated to headsets and smart glasses. The idea is to offer users of these products an intuitive interface, access to popular applications and AI assistance. With this system, Google intends to offer a more flexible and efficient tool than those already developed by Meta or Apple.
One major theme of the conference will be artificial intelligence. Google will be presenting the latest advances in its Gemini AI, but is also expected to talk about Project Astra, an intelligent agent capable of processing multimodal input (text, audio, photo and video), and its new image and video generation models. On the hardware side, Google could announce the Pixel 9a smartphone, some images of which are starting to leak onto social networks, again with a large dose of built-in AI.
The event can be followed online, with numerous keynotes streaming live on Google’s dedicated website: io.google/2025. — ETX Studio
