Android 15 Hands-On: Top 5 Features!

(light music)

- Hey, what's up, MKBHD here and I've got the latest beta

of Android 15 on my Pixel 8 Pro right here.

So a lot of you know,

I've done these videos for a long time.

Like I've made a video on the best features

of the latest version of Android

for I don't know how many years in a row now,

since they were naming 'em after desserts.

And if you've been watching all of these,

then you've noticed a trend,

which is there used to be huge new features

and massive like visual overhauls and all sorts

of crazy gigantic things changing with Android.

But now things have stabilized, I would say.

It's a lot more small changes

and more nuanced things here and there.

So it's gotten to the point where these top five features

of Android 15, back in the day,

this would've been like a .0.2 update.

Like, these are smaller and smaller

new features with each new version.

But on the other hand, that actually feels like it is...

They're a little more well considered.

They're more about usefulness,

they're more about little tweaks here

and there to make actually using

and owning your phone a little bit better.

So I can appreciate that.

And I will also say it, it's felt like

in videos in the past, I've said that,

you know, this is a version that's only gonna show up

on the Pixel for at least a year

and you may never get to see the newest version of Android,

but I feel like with a lot of the newest companies

actually promising a good amount

of software updates into the future,

hopefully more people will actually

see these couple of things.

So I'm just gonna jump right in.

These are the top five best features

I've found in Android 15.

So number five is called Private Space and it's,

yeah, it's exactly what it sounds like.

It's a private space on your Android phone

for your top secret files and photos

and whatever else you got in there.

So to turn it on, you go to Settings

and then Security & Privacy

and then Private Space is near the bottom.

So you confirm it's you and you pick a Google account

and a new lock if you want.

Then this Private Space is set up

and basically you can always find it all the way

at the bottom of your app drawer,

like that's where it lives.

So obviously, if you were to like give someone your phone

to borrow for a while, you could put it in Guest Mode

and it would just basically be a brand

new phone for them set up.

But yeah, Private Space is different.

It's more of just a separate section

under a separate lock underneath the phone

that you're already logged into and signed up for.

So it's basically a whole new little section

of your phone hidden away behind a second lock

for your top secret activities,

apps, files, photos, whatever you want.

And when you wanna hide it away again, you just hit Lock.

You could put whatever you want in there, totally up to you.

Then number four, so I'm kind

of combining a lot of these things.

I've done this in videos in the past.

It's just a whole bunch of the little things

that sort of stack up to feel

like a more refined experience.

So number four is the little things.

Like, one of them is rich widget previews,

which obviously is not a huge thing

'cause how often are you actually adding

new widgets to your home screen?

Not very much.

But when you do now, the widgets

that support this will actually show you content

that will actually be on them before they get added

and they're in live and real time

and represent real things on your phone.

This could have maybe been higher on my list,

but at this point it's so new

that it's basically only like two of Google's apps.

Like, it's just the clocks and widgets around that.

But it would be nice to see more Google apps

and even more third party apps adopt this.

Like, I want to see, in the example widget before I add it,

like one of my actual notion boards instead of a made-up one

or one of my actual contacts instead of a random person.

Another one is this new back animation

when you move backwards through like settings

or anything with multiple layers that you can back out of.

I think it's a little bit smoother, a little nicer.

Another one is Bluetooth audio sharing.

You can have multiple headphones paired

to the same Bluetooth audio source

as long as they support Bluetooth LE,

which most new headphones do.

Another one is High Quality Mode

when you use your Android phone as your webcam.

Another one is Bluetooth Auto On.

So if you turn Bluetooth off on your phone,

then the next day it automatically gets turned back on again

so you don't have to remember to.

And there's just a whole bunch more little things like that.

It feels like every year Google pays attention

to the little things about the way we use our phones

and then can add stuff to help us there.

But speaking of little things,

I'm making number three by itself one

of those little things, which is the new volume sliders.

So right now when I hit Volume,

it looks the way it normally does,

the Auto Live Caption button is still there on the Pixel,

totally underrated feature,

and then your mode switcher at the top.

But then when you hit the three dots to expand,

you get this whole almost full screen overlay showing

where you're playing audio to

and then all of the sliders for volume

of everything happening on your phone.

And this is something, you know, that's been smaller

and in various other forms and previous versions of Android,

but I like this big one.

Just makes it super clear what's going on

and how loud each individual thing is going to be.

So then now we're getting to the top.

Number two is partial screen recordings.

So I think normally when you do

a screen recording on your phone,

you just expect to see everything, right?

You just start it, it's your home screen,

it's every single app you switch between,

everything happening on your phone.

That's a normal screen recording.

But I've been playing with screen recordings here

on the Pixel with this dev preview

and it's a lot smarter about only showing

if you want individual single things

happening on your phone.

So when you go to initiate a screen recording,

you can either do the entire screen,

which is normal, or a single app.

So check this out, if I do single app

and then start recording, it gives me a picker

to choose which app I want to record.

I'll pick one of the ones I already have open,

Relay Reddit, just for this example.

The countdown starts at the top

and then it's recording this Reddit app.

So I can scroll around, just use it as usual,

but now watch, if I go home

and then open another app like Photos

and then scroll around in here,

and then go back home, go back to the Relay app,

then scroll some more, that's the screen recording.

Now check this out, when you go

to watch the screen recording, it looks normal,

but then the moment I go home and then go to Photos,

see, that doesn't show up in the screen recording.

It's still just recording the Reddit app

even though it's in the background now.

And then you can see when I get back to it

and starts scrolling some more,

it picks up where it left off.

So it's only specifically showing what I want you to see.

And this is super useful.

I think this is my new default for screen recordings.

You don't have to see, you know,

a random text message I have coming in

or me copying and pasting a security code

from another app or anything like that.

It's just me giving you a tutorial

on like one exact thing that I wanna show you.

That's pretty cool.

But then number one, this is one of those things

that Android has been really good at

and had the edge at for years,

which is just better notifications

and notification management.

And so far with these two previews,

it's even better in specifically a couple of ways.

There's Adaptive Vibrations,

there is Notification Cool Down, there is custom vibrations,

there's a whole bunch of stuff, so I'll walk through each.

So Adaptive Vibration is fascinating.

It kind of just seems like another one

of those magic-feeling Google things,

but you go into Vibration Settings and just turn it on,

there's no further settings.

But it basically says it's using your phone's mic

and other sensors to determine the sound levels around it

and potentially even what type of surface it's on

to set the strength of vibration

so you can always feel or hear it.

So the idea is if your phone is on like a desk somewhere

or a hard surface, it doesn't have

to rattle the thing at maximum strength

to be heard, it can turn it down.

But then if it's on a couch or something softer,

it will pick that up and it will vibrate more loudly

or more firmly so you can actually still hear it, clever.

And then there's another thing in Dev Preview 1 at least

that was called Notification Cool Down,

which is literally just a setting

to be able to help you manage

when you get a ton of notifications

from the same app over and over in a row.

'Cause we've all been in that group chat that's going nuts

or the Slack channel that won't shut up,

or Asana or whatever,

something that's just constantly pinging you over

and over with the same app.

And so Notification Cool Down, when you enable that,

will just sort of taper that off and keep you updated

on when a bunch of new stuff comes in, but not

just buzz you over and over. (fingers tapping)

Now that was in Dev Preview 1

and then this is Dev Preview 2

and it's not in this one, it's gone.

I'm not sure why, but I hope they bring that back.

I hope they keep it 'cause that's pretty sick.

And then there's even more subtle one that's,

'cause it's basically hidden to users,

this is something developers have seen,

which is individual vibration patterns per app.

'Cause see, some of you aren't old enough to remember

when smartphones had LED notification lights on them,

multicolor lights that would actually

have a different color light up based on

what app you were getting a notification from.

So I could know, without waking up my phone,

if I had a blinking blue light happening,

oh, that's a Twitter notification, I can ignore it.

Or if it was a blinking green light,

then it's a new Gmail notification and I can ignore it.

But if it's a new blinking red light,

then it's a new missed call and I can ignore it.

But then phones all got rid of these lights.

So now we wake up our phones

every time I wanna check on something.

And if you have it always on display, that can be useful.

But in a surface shown to developers,

they have the ability now to customize

their own vibration pattern specific to their app.

So I think that's pretty sick.

I'm kinda hoping, and this is totally just hoping,

but I hope that they surface that to users as well.

I hope, just like I've been able to pick

between a bunch of different weather icon apps

for my one app that does weather,

I hope they let me choose

between a couple custom vibration sounds

or vibration patterns for apps

because I would love to customize

and feel that I've gotten a Twitter notification

and that I can still ignore it.

Now for those wondering, since we check every year,

when you go into Settings,

it doesn't actually say Android 15,

it says Vanilla Ice Cream for this Dev Preview 2.

And when you click into it, this is the animated Easter egg,

which looks nothing like vanilla ice cream,

but for what it's worth, it's a little more space-like.

But now here's the thing, if you hold it down long enough,

it speeds up all the way and then snaps

and turns into this, this sort of random spacecraft

in the middle of what seems like a nearly infinite canvas.

Kinda reminds me of that asteroids game

from back in the day.

But you don't shoot anything,

you just kinda fly around using this thrust vector

and explore this gigantic space.

The only thing that worries me is that in the corner,

it says BODIES: 0 / 10.

So I think if people explore this thing long enough,

they're gonna find bodies, whatever that means.

But yeah, like I said, a bunch of subtle things,

some new notification stuff here and there,

some new management usage of your phone type stuff.

It's nuanced, it's subtle.

I'm still excited for some of the bigger AI-based features

to drop because that's the stuff that we're expecting

to make a big difference the way we use our phones.

It's just not built into Android anymore.

It's the AI stuff that your phone is capable of

that's not in the OS. (soft music)

It's still good to see good OS features too.

Lemme know what your favorite one is

or if you agree with my order

of the top five in the comments section below.

Thanks for watching, catch you in the next one, peace.

(soft music continues)