Android 15: My Favourite Features So Far

Android 15 is finally here at least still in its testing phase(Android 15 Beta 1) and we are getting sneak previews of the new features Google’s mobile OS will bring later this year.

Internally Android 15 is called Vanilla Ice Cream with the letter V and its logo is a green triangle with rounded corners, inside is the Android mascot labelled 15 at the back – it still sticks with the same space theme as Android 14. Android 15 comes with incremental upgrades unlike when Android 14 succeeded Android 13 with big changes in the user interface and overall look.

Android 15’s features focus mainly on privacy, smooth performance, better media consumption experiences, reducing battery impact and others.

High-Quality Webcam Mode

Android 15 features a new High-Quality USB Webcam mode setting that you can enable to improve the video quality and match iPhone Continuity Camera quality for video calls.

App Archiving

This feature allows you to archive unused apps on your phone to free up storage space especially if you have a base model device with 128GB ROM or less. App archiving reduces an app size by 95%.

Archiving an app lets you save important data like login credentials, data and more when you uninstall it to help you easily get back to the app when you restore it from the Play Store.

This new feature will be in built on the OS to automatically archive rarely used apps.

It’s worth noting that iOS already has this app offloading feature within the phone’s settings.

Improved Android Performance Durability Power Framework

Android 15 features a new power efficiency mode that decreases power consumption used by long-running background apps by optimizing both GPU and CPU for efficient workload handling.

This is all thanks to the improved Android Performance Durability Power Framework that consists of CPU performance hints, fixed performance mode and thermal state monitoring.

Cellular Transparency Feature

To ensure you are on a secure cellular connection, Android 15 has a new cellular transparency feature that alerts you when a cellular network starts collecting your smartphone’s IMSI/IMEI details or when it tries to alter the ciphering algorithm.

This setting also has a toggle to enable encryption which removes null-ciphered connections.

New Location Privacy Settings

To limit on what cellular networks can access on your phone, the new OS gives users more control over how a carrier can access a network-initiated location request for non-emergency cases.

Bluetooth Auto-on Toggle Setting

Android is shipping a feature native to iOS – the ability to automatically turn on Bluetooth without disabling it when turned off. When this toggle is enabled, devices connected by Bluetooth to the phone will be disconnected temporarily until the following day.

The OS is limiting this feature to system-level apps.

Automatic Volume Lowering for Connected Headphones

This is a feature I’ve seen on other non-Google Android user interfaces that alerts you when you have a loud volume on your headphones – the phone then automatically lowers it to a safer level if you have been listening at high volume for a longer period.

It’s good that this feature will now be embedded within the new OS.

New Easy Pre-set Mode

This new feature enhances phone access, especially for the elderly by improving navigation and readability by increasing the size of icons and text, adding bottom navigation buttons and adding boldness and contrast.

Home Controls Screensaver

You’ll soon be able to control Google Home devices when your phone goes idle/charging with the new home controls screensaver option.

Split-Screen App Pairs

Google is shipping another feature from Chinese user interfaces like OPPO’s ColorOS which allows you to save app pairs for split-screen use cases.

The app pairs are saved as one icon on the homescreen.

Private Space

This is another feature that was native to other Android UIs and is making its way to Pixel devices. With Private Space, you can hide apps you don’t want to be accessible or visible to other people and set a secure lock to it.

New Powered Off Finding API

This feature takes advantage of the new Find My Device network to help locate switched-off devices, which iOS already has.

New Volume Panel Design

The new OS has collapsible thicker pill-shaped volume panel sliders for alarms, media, notification, call, and ring. The sliders show levels in numbers when you adjust them.

Battery Health Information

The new OS will show battery health information besides battery percentage to show the condition of your phone – a feature iOS already sports.

Lock Screen Widgets

We thought this would be available for phones, but Google is keeping this feature for tablets.

Android supported lock screen widgets with 4.2 Jellybean before being scraped off in Android 5.0 Lollipop. iOS 16 supports lock screen widgets which makes me jealous that we won’t have it on smartphones.