The Android team at Google LLC today unveiled the second developer beta for Android 15, the next milestone toward the finality of the company’s smartphone operating system, which included productivity improvements, performance and security updates.

Alongside the second beta for Android 15, Google also announced developer updates for Android devices in the broader ecosystem, including Watches, TVs and additional developer tools that are now available. These will continue to help developers continue to build apps for the devices.

Android 15 Beta 2 brings better security and performance

In Beta 2, the Android team has introduced “private space,” a kind of secure locker that allows users to keep sensitive apps away from third parties that might get access to their phones protected by an additional layer of security. Private space itself uses a separate profile that can be locked by the user that pauses apps and keeps them separated from the rest of the device, to access them it must be unlocked.

Notifications and interactions with apps in the private space show up in a separate container in the launcher, meaning that it maintains isolated privacy. Any signals generated by those apps cannot be targeted by apps outside of the private space.

Android 15 now protects further from malicious apps by preventing them from bringing themselves to the foreground, a restriction introduced in Android 10. This prevents hostile apps from launching and overlaying themselves over another app and allowing a user to click on them as if pretending to be a “button” so that they receive an interaction.

To improve battery life, the Beta 2 now has timeouts for processes that keep themselves in the foreground for more than six hours. Apps will be required to support memory 16-kilobyte page sizes, which will help reduce power draw during app launches and lower launch times when the system is under load. The new beta adds dav1d, a popular AV1 video software decoder from VideoLAN is now on Android, which is 3x more performant than legacy decoders.

Users will also experience better ways to multitask on large screens with Beta 2. For example, users can pin the taskbar on the screen to quickly switch between apps or save their favorite split-screen app combinations. To ease user experience with Android apps, developers can make personalized previews of widgets so that users can know what they’ll see when they move it onto the home screen, rather than a stock placeholder made by the developer.

Updates coming to the Android ecosystem

Android Watches are getting better with Wear OS 5, released in developer preview, which will be arriving later this year. Based on Android 14, it will help improve battery life and give greater performance for fitness and workout tracking while consuming 20% less power than Wear OS 4.

Android 14 and Compose are now in beta for TV, which will bring better performance and better response to the experience of using these entertaining devices, the Android team said. New energy-saving modes have also been added to help reduce power use when on standby. Picture-in-picture mode is also now supported on Android 14 TV models that can access it. Compose for TV, the app development toolkit for designing native user interfaces is now in beta that includes native components, improved input support and a myriad of animations.

Google TV and Android TV models integrated with Google’s generative artificial intelligence Gemini model will receive personalized AI-generated descriptions for movies and shows that will fill in missing or untranslated descriptions. The company said this would help viewers avoid guessing what entertainment experience they were jumping into before they clicked on a potential show or a flick.

New augmented reality features and content in Google Maps

Google has added new geospatial augmented reality content visible through mobile devices using Street View and Lens in Maps alongside updates to Geospatial Creator and its ARCore application programming interface for developers.

Users can already discover AR content within Google Maps by searching for a location. If a selected point of interest has AR content and the user is near that location, they can tap on an image that says “AR Experience,” and the application will take them into Lens. Then they can lift their phone and it will overlay their view with holographic virtual content. If they’re viewing remotely, they can see the same content via Street View.

Through an early access program, Google has launched a 6-month pilot in Singapore and Paris to pilot this content and give users a chance to try it out. The Singapore Tourism Board brought on board landmarks, restaurants and other locales as part of Merli’s Immersive Adventure. Rock Paper Reality partnered with Google to bring Paris to life, including a visualization of unrealized modifications of the Eiffel Tower.

For developers, Google announced that Geospatial Creator in Adobe Aero is now available for everyone. This tool allows creators to make world-scale AR experiences similar to those previewed above so that they can be mapped onto real-world locations and viewed through the lens of a smartphone, mobile device or mixed-reality headset. Google also announced the expansion of ARCore Geospatial API coverage, which allows the attachment of these experiences to locations, to include India.

Image: Google