Android 15 Developer Preview released – What’s New?

Google has just released the first Android 15 Developer Preview with some improvements related to privacy and security, the addition of the partial screen sharing feature, camera and audio improvements, and some new performance optimization that developers can leverage when running games or other demanding applications.

User privacy and security in Android 15

Android 15 features the latest version of the Privacy Sandbox on Android to improve user privacy while enabling personalized advertising experiences for mobile apps, the Heatlth Connect by Android adds support for new data types related to fitness, nutrition, and more, and the File integrity manager implement new APIs making use of the fs-verity feature that was added to the Linux 5.4 kernel so that files can be protected by custom cryptographic signatures.

Partial screen sharing is a completely new feature in Android 15 that allows users to share or record an app window rather than the entire device screen. It was first enabled in Android 14 QPR2 Beta, but it will be fully part of the latest version of Android during the preview and at launch later this year.

Camera and audio improvements

Android 15 adds some new camera features with low-light enhancements to boost the brightness of the camera preview and advanced flash strength adjustments to control the flash intensity in both SINGLE and TORCH modes.

Android 13 added support for connecting to MIDI 2.0 devices via USB, and Android 15 builds upon the feature adding support for virtual MIDI 2.0 devices.

Performance optimization

The Android Dynamic Performance Framework (ADPF) is a set of APIs that allow performance-intensive apps – such as games – to interact more directly with power and thermal systems of Android devices and Android 15 will add the following capabilities on supported devices:

• A power-efficiency mode for long-running background workloads.
• GPU and CPU work durations can both be reported allowing the system to adjust CPU and GPU frequencies accordingly
• Thermal headroom thresholds to interpret possible thermal throttling status based on headroom prediction.

Developers can get more information about the new features and ADPF in general on the Android developer’s website.

Android 15 Preview images and release schedule

There’s nothing ground-breaking in the improvements and new features above, but maybe others will be revealed as more people test the new images. If you are an Android app developer or simply a curious user, you’ll find the Android 15 Preview images for Pixel 6 and 6 Pro, Pixel 6a, Pixel 7 and 7 Pro, Pixel 7a, Pixel Fold, Pixel Tablet, and Pixel 8 and 8 Pro along with instructions in the relevant webpage. It’s also possible to use the Android Emulator in Android Studio if you don’t own any of those devices.

One more developer preview is scheduled for March, followed by two or three beta releases, plus one or two platform stability releases where the APIs are frozen, before the final release is outed, likely sometime in September or October.

Additional information about Android 15 can be found on the developer’s website and the preview announcement.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.

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