The first Android 15 Developer Preview 1 is out and loaded up on our phones. We’ll be diving in through the next several days to find all that is new and see if we can uncover big changes for you to get excited about. But not all changes are flashy, as you know, and many in these early preview builds are for developers to focus on in order to get apps ready when the stable version drops.
In general, Google is saying that Android 15 is here to continue to “build a platform that helps improve your productivity while giving you new capabilities to produce superior media and AI experiences, minimize battery impact, maximize smooth app performance, and protect user privacy and security, all on the most diverse lineup of devices out there.”
Let’s run through more specifics on what that really means for now.
- Health Connect: Google is updating Health Connect in Android 15 to support new data types across fitness, nutrition, and more.
- Partial screen sharing: In Android 15, screen sharing gets more control that allows users to limit what they share down to just an app window rather than the entire device screen.
- In-app camera controls: Android 15 adds new extensions to give developers control over low light enhancements in the camera, as well as advanced flash strength adjustments.
- File integrity: I’ll let Google explain this one – New APIs “tap into the power of the fs-verity feature in the Linux kernel,” allowing files to be “protected by custom cryptographic signatures, helping you ensure they haven’t been tampered with or corrupted.”
- Dynamic performance: Android 15 allows for improved performance in games and performance intensive apps by adding capabilities like a power-efficiency mode that can be tapped into for hint sessions, GPU and CPU work durations that can be adjusted to meet workload demands, and better thermal management.
- Privacy Sandbox on Android: The latest version of the Privacy Sandbox on Android has been included to, you know, improve privacy and security.
If you are a developer, you’ll want to hit that Android Developers Blog link below to get more info on all of that. For those looking for the fun user-facing changes that you may be able to play with, we’ll have that for you here.
