Pixel phone owners take note: your Android 15 update is reportedly set to arrive on October 15.
Android Headlines claims this is when the next major phone software version will be released, although it did not specifically claim to have an insider source within Google.
Android 15 is the 15th major release and the 22nd version of Android.
Google announced the software would come to Pixel devices “in the coming weeks” earlier in September when the basic skeleton of Android 15 was added to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). But that’s not of much interest to the average Android owner.
As ever, Pixel phones will get the update first. Phones of the Pixel 6 generation, from 2021, and newer will receive it.
The Pixel 5 generation, left out in the cold, was promised only three years of updates at its release in 2020. It’s quite different from what we’re offered today. Google says the Pixel 9 family will get “OS and security updates” for seven years.
When will other phones get up to date with Android 15? This is always harder to pin down because phone-makers must make their custom interfaces work with the new stuff in core Android.
Samsung’s Android 15 update for the Galaxy S24 family and others is called One UI 7. And while it’s in the works, we’ve yet to see a beta of the software released. It’s not a good sign for hopes the latest Samsung phones won’t be too far behind the Pixels.
A report from August 2024 suggested Samsung was struggling to get the new software working on its phones.
Android 15 features
Android 15 isn’t quite as dramatic an update as iOS 18 — although with an iPhone you’ll still have to wait a while for the spotlight-stealing Apple Intelligence to arrive — but it has some notable new bits.
Private Space lets you lock certain apps behind a security layer, including a fingerprint pin code, to keep prying eyes away. Similar takes on this concept have been in third-party versions of Android for years, but it’s good to see this one finally become part of Android proper.
Partial Screen recording lets you send a video of what’s on your phone screen to someone, without showing everything happening on your phone. It limits the feed to one app, rather than recording you jumping between them and your home screens.
Boring but useful, Android 15 will also get better handling of PDF files. It will let you search for text within a PDF and add annotations, without needing a third-party app to do the job.
