equal parts mature and boring software

The day has come. After much waiting, delays, and even Vivo getting ahead of itself, Google has released Android 15 for the Google Pixel. Anyone with a Pixel 6 or later can update via OTA or manually to the latest version of Android.

At Xataka, we were able to test Android 15 on the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL, Google’s latest high-end product. We are going to tell you what our experience is and what the main news is, although we can already say that almost everything remains the same.

Visually invisible update

On a visual level, I miss most of the new features. Everything remains almost the same as beforeand the first thing I had to do was go into settings and check that I was running Android 15.

It’s true that Material You is very polished and, especially on the Google Pixel, the interface is a wonder. Despite this, we’ve had almost no aesthetic changes in three years – a continuity that reminds us a lot of iOS.

Yes, I noticed three small changes. Firstly, the launcher is now able to display long names in both the application list and the search results bar.

The second change is the volume panel. By expanding it, we get a new interface for accessing playback settings and custom control of alarms, media, ringtones or automatic subtitles.

Finally, we have the animation changes. They are now predictive, so they tell us where the app will go before completing the gesture. As you can see in the video, if we make a return gesture, we will be shown the application that is “below”. I understand that this is a matter of getting used to, but in my particular case I find this rather inconvenient and not very visual..

Important news

Yes, there are a few small new features in Android 15 that you can try out now. The first of them is Private Space. This feature, which requires biometric authentication, allows you to create a secondary profile on your phone to isolate apps from your main profile.

These apps are hidden not only in the launcher, but also in the settings menu, recent screen, notification panel… Basically, the apps don’t exist.

The problem I see? By default, the launcher itself tells us that there is something in the personal space, so we give clues that there is something hidden on our phone. I highly recommend going into your private space configuration settings and enabling the “Hide private space” option.

So to access it we will have to do it from the search bar and it won’t be as visible.

Another great new feature is related to application file. Now we can not only delete applications, but also archive them. This frees up space by removing cached data but retaining application configuration data. In other words, you can “half-uninstall” an app so that when you restore it, we tell the Google Play Store to download the installation files again.

There are other small changes, such as the fact that Bluetooth will now be activated automatically if we deactivate it the next day, if we do not uncheck “Activate automatically tomorrow”, anti-theft features will appear, as well as small improvements that make Android 15 is a more complete system.

The software follows a clear direction: maturity

Android 15 feels good. It’s a polished system that adds small improvements to what we already had, and shows that Android is at a fairly high stage of maturity. Negative point? That most of these changes are subtle and minor, and this is the version we’ll look back on years from now with some fondness.

Both mobile software and hardware for several years They move towards subtle and polished changes.leaving important news for very rare occasions.

Image | Hataka

In Hatak | How to know if your Xiaomi, Redmi or POCO mobile phone will update to Android 15 with one click using this app