Android 15 is still in its beta testing phase, but it’s inching closer to a final release, and we’re getting excited about all the changes that will bring. From a distance, Android 15 may not appear to bring that many changes, but we’ve found a lot of small improvements to look forward to.
1 Adaptive Vibration
Ever have your phone vibrate on a hard surface and startle you with a deafening buzz? Adaptive Vibration will make that less of a problem. It changes the intensity of vibrations based on your surroundings to make them less jarring, while still being audible. How? By using input from the device’s microphone and other built-in sensors.
If your device is on a hard surface, Adaptive Vibration will automatically reduce the vibration. However, if your phone is beside you on a couch cushion or something soft, the same feature will boost the rumble of the vibration so that you’ll still be able to hear it.
2 Add More Items to Google Wallet
It’s possible to convert more and more important documents or cards into digitized into electronic versions. This makes them easy to take with you wherever you go, because they can live on your phone. But not everything is possible to be digitized.
Currently, Google Wallet limits many physical documents and cards to only let you digitize ones that have a QR code or barcode. With Android 15, that limitation will be lifted, allowing you to add cards that only feature text and images. It’ll do this by taking a photo of the document, then adding a digital version of it to Google Wallet for you.
3 Manual App Archiving
If you’re on the verge of maxing out your Android phone’s storage space, you already have the option to automatically archive apps from Android’s settings. This will remove the app to save space, while keeping all your personal data from that app on your phone. That means you can download the app again to pick up right where you left off the next time you use it.
Android will automatically choose which apps to archive based on when you last used them. This works pretty well most of the time, but it isn’t ideal if there are important apps you want to keep on your phone even if you don’t use them much. With Android 15, you’ll be able to manually choose which apps to archive and which to keep on your phone instead.
4 More Advanced Google Play Protect
Google Play Protect already keeps your phone safe from malware by analyzing app behavior in the background to identify suspicious apps and trojan horses. With Android 15, Google is leveraging more AI power to improve this service.
This on-device AI feature operates just like any antivirus program. It detects suspicious behavior, and alerts both you and Google. The Android 15 version of Google Play Protect will include additional protections, such as one-time password protection and expanded restricted settings.
5 Color Contrast Options
New color contrast options in the “Wallpaper & Style” settings of Android 15 will allow you to increase or decrease the contrast between text and background colors on your phone, for better visibility and readability.
You can select from Default, Medium, or High, and doing so can dramatically alter how elements appear on your screen. You can also add a black or white backgrounds to blocks of text for even better readability.
6 Automatic Bluetooth
For security or travel, you may be prompted to turn off Bluetooth. What happens with many people is they forget to turn their Bluetooth back on. Then, when you try to connect your Bluetooth accessory again, it doesn’t connect and can be a cause of frustration.
With Android 15, you will be able to choose to “Automatically Turn On Again Tomorrow” when disabling Bluetooth. This is the perfect option when you only need to temporarily disable Bluetooth, for flights or other reasons like that.
7 Private Space
If you pass your phone to a friend for them to make a call or search for something, you might be concerned about them seeing or opening certain apps on your phone. These could be financial apps, dating apps, or anything else that you don’t want anybody to be able to peek at.
With Android 15, you get a new feature called Private Space to address this issue. It creates a section at the bottom of your app drawer that requires verification before it can be opened. In this space, you can lock in sensitive apps that you want to keep private. As a bonus, Private Space also hides any notifications tied to these apps.
8 Low-Light Boost
Night Sight is already on most Android devices and allows you to take far better photos at night. It’s so good that the resulting photo usually shows much more detail than what you could see on the screen before snapping it, which is where Low-Light Boost comes in.
This Android 15 feature will boost what appears on your screen when trying to take a photo in low light environments, making it easier to see what the final photo will come out with and allowing you to frame it perfectly.
9 Factory Reset Protection
When a thief swipes a phone, more often than not, they plan to wipe the device and resell it. Even if your phone is locked, they may be able to erase it by connecting to a computer.
That’s why Android 15 will have built-in Factory Reset Protection. When this is turned on, resetting your phone will require additional verification, meaning a thief won’t be able to do it without also knowing your verification details. This not only protects your data but reduces the incentive for Android phones to be stolen in the first place.
10 Theft Detection Lock
If someone grabs your phone out of your hand, they may be able to get at your data before you had a chance to lock the device. But Android 15’s Theft Detection Lock will make the less likely as it uses AI and sensor data to automatically lock the phone under certain conditions.
For example, it’ll lock your phone when it detects sudden movement, such as someone grabbing the device from someone else’s hands.
11 Partial Screen Sharing
If you’re ever sharing your phone screen with another device, you might accidentally show content from irrelevant apps as you switch between them. With Android 15, you’ll be able to avoid those slip ups thanks to Partial Screen Sharing.
This feature will let you choose to share or record a single app window, rather than the entire device screen. This protects your privacy while simplifying the process of screen sharing, directing attention only to the relevant image.
12 Predictive Back By Default
When you swipe from left-to-right to go back on Android, you don’t always know where it’s going to take you. Google tried to remedy this back in Android 13 with Predictive Back, which shows a preview of the page you’re about to go to before you finish swiping. With Android 15, that’s becoming the default behavior.
After years of testing, Google will be rolling this feature out fully by making it the default setting for apps in Android. If an app has nowhere to go back to, you’ll see a preview of your home screen instead, so you’ll never be surprised by where the swipe takes you.
13 PDF Improvements
Working from a phone is challenging at the best of times, but especially when you need to make edits or annotations to PDFs, seemingly the trickiest of all files. Well, things should go a lot smoother in Android 15 as Google has put some work into improving PDF handling this time around.
Not only should PDFs load better, but you will have support for password-protected files along with more editing options, like annotations.
14 Ask Photos Improvements
The next two features aren’t just coming to Android 15, they’re improvements to Google’s services across all platforms. But since we’re expected to get them around the same time as Android 15, they make sense to include here.
Most of us have thousands of photos on our phones, which can make searching for a specific image take an awful lot of effort. You can already narrow down your results by searching for people, places, or objects, but Android 15 will take that a step further with Ask Photos.
This improvement integrates Google’s Gemini LLM into the photos search feature, allowing you to use natural language prompts to find specific images more easily. For example, “Find the photo I took after scuba diving two summers ago.”
15 AR in Google Maps
Imagine being able to hold your phone screen up at the area surrounding you and have it provide information about the landmarks, businesses, and nearby attractions. This is exactly what you get with an upcoming feature that has further embedded augmented reality content into Google Maps.
This new form of content delivery overlays the space in front of the camera with additional info and will even add arrows to direct you along the correct route while walking or driving. This new Google Maps feature is not exclusive to Android 15; it’ll be available for all Google Maps users. There is already an early-access pilot in talks for Singapore and Paris later this year exclusively for Android users.
It’s still unclear exactly when Google will be releasing Android 15. Insider experts believe it will be sometime this fall, though many thought it would happen alongside the Pixel 9 launch, which didn’t happen. However, we know now that whenever Android 15 is released, with its many upgrades and improved functionality, it is certain to offer a lot of quality-of-life improvements for us.
