Android 15 has launched in the form of a developer preview

Not for the masses, yet

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Android 15is here – although only in a very early form for developers to test, for now.Googlehas made downloads available for recent Pixel devices, including the Pixel 6, the Pixel 7, and thePixel 8.

In ablog postby Google’s Dave Burke, we get mentions of productivity boosts, “superior media experiences”, battery life improvements, upgrades to app performance, and protections for user privacy and security.

A lot of the early features are under-the-hood tweaks, as you would expect from a developer preview. For example, app makers get more control over how low light photos are processed by the camera, and how bright the camera flash gets. Also new is the ability to capture just part of the screen in screen recordings.

Developers will also be able to access more efficient power modes (to ease the strain on the battery), and extra file integrity protections that can check if files have been tampered with before they’re accessed by an app.

Public betas

We don’t have any major new features to report just yet, but little tweaks are already being noticed – such as more flexibility for controlling keyboardvibration strength, and a ‘cooldown’ feature for notifications frombusy group chats.

Code spotted in Android 14 betas also gives some clues about what’s coming our way with Android 15: a properbattery health percentage indicator, the return oflock screen widgets, and support for theenhanced Bluetooth Auracast standard.

None of those features are visible yet, and over the next few months you can expect functionality to come and go as Google tweaks the code heading to Android phones and tablets. As with previous previews and betas, the idea is to test the software – and at this stage it’s not something you should think about installing yourself.

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The codename for this version is reportedly Vanilla Ice Cream, and the logo badge matches the same space theme that we saw withAndroid 14. The timeline published by Google suggests public betas will be available in April, with a full launch later this year.

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Dave is a freelance tech journalist who has been writing about gadgets, apps and the web for more than two decades. Based out of Stockport, England, on TechRadar you’ll find him covering news, features and reviews, particularly for phones, tablets and wearables. Working to ensure our breaking news coverage is the best in the business over weekends, David also has bylines at Gizmodo, T3, PopSci and a few other places besides, as well as being many years editing the likes of PC Explorer and The Hardware Handbook.

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