After many months of developer previews and beta releases, Android 15 is now formally obtainable.
It can begin rolling out to supported Pixel units within the subsequent few weeks, and within the subsequent few months, units from Samsung, Honor, iQOO, Lenovo, Motorola, Nothing, OnePlus, Oppo, realme, Sharp, Sony, Tecno, vivo and Xiaomi will get it.
It gives a number of updates that customers will be capable to benefit from, akin to the truth that the TalkBack display screen reader is now powered by Gemini, Chrome can now learn net pages aloud, and the Earthquake Alerts System — which makes use of crowdsourced earthquake detection know-how to inform of earthquakes earlier than they begin — is rolling out to all U.S. states and 6 territories.
As with each Android replace, there are numerous modifications builders will want to pay attention to. This time, the principle updates for builders might be divided into 4 classes: typography and internationalization, digicam and media experiences, person expertise, and privateness and safety.
“Android 15 continues our mission of constructing a personal and safe platform that helps enhance your productiveness whereas supplying you with new capabilities to provide stunning apps, superior media and digicam experiences, and an intuitive person expertise, significantly on tablets and foldables,” Matthew McCullough, VP of product for Android Developer, wrote in a weblog publish.
Typography and internationalization
FontFamily cases can now be created from variable fonts with out having to specify the wght and ital axes, and the textual content renderer will robotically modify these values to match the airing textual content.
NotoSansCJK, which is the font file for Chinese language, Japanese, and Korean, can be now a variable font, which the Android crew says creates new alternatives for artistic typography.
The Japanese Hiragana, or Hentaigana, font is now bundled by default, useful for art work and design, but in addition in sharing and preserving historic Japanese paperwork.
And eventually, there’s improved justification for languages which use white area to section characters, like Chinese language and Japanese.
Digicam and media
For screens that help each HDR and SDR, setDesiredHdrHeadroom can be utilized to set the HDR headroom, which might stop SDR content material from displaying as washed out.
Android 15 additionally helps clever adjustment of audio quantity and dynamic vary compression for apps with AAC audio content material and loudness metadata. This enables quantity to be adjusted based mostly on person units and environment, the Android crew defined.
Different updates on this space embrace Low Mild Enhance to regulate the publicity of the Preview stream in low-light situations, better management of flash depth in SINGLE and TORCH modes, and help for digital MIDI 2.0 units as in the event that they have been a USB MIDI 2.0 system.
Person expertise
To enhance multitasking, customers can now save their split-screen app combos and likewise pin the taskbar.
Moreover, apps that focus on SDK 35 will show edge-to-edge by default. System bars might be clear or translucent, and content material is drawn behind.
Privateness and safety
Customers can now create a personal area the place they will cover sure apps, requiring authentication to entry them.
Android 15 additionally provides help for utilizing passkeys to sign-on and helps autofilling saved credentials into related enter fields.
Additionally, apps can now detect if they’re being recorded, which permits apps to inform the person if that is occurring whereas they’re performing a delicate activity.
Moreover, the brand new allowCrossUidActivitySwiftFromBelow attribute prevents activity hijacking assaults by blocking apps from launching actions in the event that they don’t match the highest UID on the stack.
And eventually, PendingIntent creators now block background exercise launches by default, which prevents apps from unintentionally creating ones that might be utilized by malicious actors
Different developer expertise updates throughout Android Studio, Jetpack Compose, and Android Jetpack libraries
The ApplicationStartInfo API offers perception into the explanation an app is beginning, time spent in launch phases, begin temperature, and extra.
The profiling class in Android Jetpack lets apps request heap profiles, heap dumps, stack samples, or system traces.
StorageStats.getAppBytesByDataType([type]) API provides insights into how an app is utilizing storage.
Different developer expertise updates embrace new PdfRenderer API capabilities, new OpenJDK APIs, new SQLite APIs, and new Canvas drawing capabilities.
