(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)