The next version of Android remains in the don’t-try-this-at-home phase, but the arrival of the Android 15 beta on Thursday marks a significant step forward in that release’s development.
VP of Engineering Dave Burke’s post begins by describing an app layout tweak that might make your phone’s screen seem a little bigger: Android 15 will automatically support an “edge-to-edge” view for an app that will have its content flow under transparent displays of the system status bar at the top and navigation bars at the bottom.
Another change to the way Android handles apps could make life easier for people who use alternative app stores on phones with little storage space. Android 15 will bring the app archiving feature that Google introduced for apps on its Google Play store last year to third-party app stores — an issue that European regulators continue to investigate.
The third revision of application support extends Android’s accessibility support to help applications that use the TalkBack feature of screen readers to connect to braille displays.
Among other updates, Burke’s post lists two notable security features: operating system-level support for storing contacts’ cryptographic public keys that enable end-to-end encrypted communication with them, plus “additional changes to prevent malicious background apps from bringing other apps into the first plan, elevating their privileges and abusing user interaction.”
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This beta release follows Google’s delivery of an Android 15 development preview in February that focused on privacy and security, followed by a second development preview in March that revealed new features for satellite roaming and PDF viewing.
Unlike previous releases, which only supported installation on Google’s newer Pixel devices, the beta should work on any Pixel enrolled in Google’s Android beta program. Google’s timeline for Android 15 calls for a beta 2 release in May (which will likely coincide with its I/O developer conference), “platform stability” with a beta 3 release in June, followed by a consumer release in late summer or early autumn.
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