7 new Android 16 features that are coming in major free upgrade

Google has released a major new version of Android 16 for Pixel smartphone users, and it adds a bunch of useful features in what is effectively the December Pixel Drop.

Android 16 QPR2, as it’s known, is about much more than the December 2025 security patch. Anyone with a Google Pixel 6 phone or newer will be getting a stack of additional tools and features.

To check if the update is ready for your Pixel phone, head to Settings > System > Software updates and tap System update.

Here are seven of our favourite new Android 16 features from a much longer list of new elements to the OS.

Pin tabs in Chrome

This one might just be my favourite addition of the lot. It is also, without doubt, the most dull new feature that Google has added. I do not like what these two facts say about my personality.

You can now pin tabs to the top of the Chrome web browser. As someone who always has open tabs that they wish to refer to on a semi-regular basis – whether a lengthy holiday attraction rundown or a game guide – yet who constantly loses them, this is a godsend.

AI notification summaries

Google now offers smart AI-powered summaries of your incoming notifications, allowing you to parse their contents at a glance without opening them. Apple has something like this in iOS, but it’s not very good. We expect Google to do better.

Urgent call alerts

This one could be very useful indeed for a lot of people. Even call someone with an urgent call, and wish you could communicate the importance of picking beyond bombarding them with messages?

Call Reason (currently in beta) lets you flag a call to a saved contact as “urgent.” It’ll then appear as such to the other person, who might me nonchalantly checking who’s calling. And if they still miss the call? That Urgent tag stays in their call history, prompting them to call back sharpish.

AI scam detection

Ever wondered whether an incoming message is a scam or not, but can’t be bothered to Google it? Circle to Search can now check for you, drawing reliable insight from across the internet to provide an AI Overview on whether it’s legit or not, along with suitable next steps if it’s not.

Expressive Captions in live videos

As someone who doesn’t do video messages, live streams, or even really social media (I’m a regular Grinch), this new feature doesn’t affect me – but I can’t deny that it looks cool.

Expressive Captions detects when emotion is being expressed on a video, and adds appropriate emotion tags. Perfect for those sound-off video transcription moments.

New split screen options

Android 16’s December update adds a potentially useful degree of split-screen flexibility. You can now run one two apps in a 90:10 split ratio, offering the vast majority of screen space to one app, and a tiny sliver to another. Given that your attention and interaction is generally only on one app at a time, this seems like it could be a game changer.

Emoji mash-ups

On a similar ‘not for me, but cool’ note, Google is adding a feature to Gboard that will combine two emoji into new evolved types. The example used is when a hug emoji and a monkey emoji is used, resulting in a pair of hugging monkeys. Delightful.