Google's Android 15 developer preview introduces satellite connectivity, alongside improvements to payments, language recognition, and PDF interactions.
Google released the second developer preview for Android 15. This update brings exciting new features you can start tinkering with, including long-awaited support for satellite connectivity!
These previews are like early testing grounds for features that will likely be available to everyone later this year in the official Android 15 release. Google expects public beta testing to happen sometime between April and July.
So, what's new in Preview 2? This update tackles some common user pain points and security concerns. For example, apps will now be more aware of why certain services might be unavailable when using a satellite connection. This is also the first official confirmation that Android 15 will support satellite messaging! Google mentioned that the preview includes features for preloaded messaging apps to utilize satellite connections for sending and receiving texts.
There are improvements for contactless payments too. Apps using NFC (Near Field Communication) will see more reliable one-tap payments. Remember that multi-language audio recognition introduced in Android 14? It's getting even better in Preview 2, with fewer dropped words when switching between languages.
Flip phone users will enjoy this update as well. Developers will have more ways to interact with those handy little cover screens. For everyone else, a new loudness standard called CTA-2075 is being supported. This should mean less fiddling with the volume button when switching between different content, as everything should sound more consistent.
And for those who work with PDFs in apps, there's good news! Google is making significant improvements to PDF features. This includes support for password-protected PDFs, adding annotations, editing forms, searching within the document, and even selecting and copying text.
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