When asked about specifics, Samsung doesn’t have much to say. “The One UI 7 rollout schedule is being updated to ensure the best possible experience. The new timing and availability will be shared shortly,” the company said.
Samsung’s flagship foldables, the Z Flip 6 and Z Fold 6, are among the phones waiting on the One UI 7 update.
Credit: Ryan Whitwam
Samsung’s flagship foldables, the Z Flip 6 and Z Fold 6, are among the phones waiting on the One UI 7 update. Credit: Ryan Whitwam
One UI 7 is based on Android 15, which is the latest version of the OS for the moment. Google plans to release the first version of Android 16 in June, which is much earlier than in previous cycles. Samsung’s current-gen Galaxy S25 family launched with One UI 7, so owners of those devices don’t need to worry about the buggy update.
Samsung is no doubt working to fix the issues and restart the update rollout. Its statement is vague about timing—”shortly” can mean many things. We’ve reached out and will report if Samsung offers any more details on the pause or when it will be over.
When One UI 7 finally arrives on everyone’s phones, the experience will be similar to what you get on the Galaxy S25 lineup. There are a handful of base Android features in the update, but it’s mostly a Samsung affair. There’s the new AI-infused Now Bar, more expansive AI writing tools, camera UI customization, and plenty of interface tweaks.
Android 15 started rolling out to Pixel devices Tuesday and will arrive, through various third-party efforts, on other Android devices at some point. There is always a bunch of little changes to discover in an Android release, whether by reading, poking around, or letting your phone show you 25 new things after it restarts.
In Android 15, some of the most notable involve making your device less appealing to snoops and thieves and more secure against the kids to whom you hand your phone to keep them quiet at dinner. There are also smart fixes for screen sharing, OTP codes, and cellular hacking prevention, but details about them are spread across Google’s own docs and blogs and various news site’s reports.
Here’s what is notable and new in how Android 15 handles privacy and security.
Private Space for apps
In the Android 15 settings, you can find “Private Space,” where you can set up a separate PIN code, password, biometric check, and optional Google account for apps you don’t want to be available to anybody who happens to have your phone. This could add a layer of protection onto sensitive apps, like banking and shopping apps, or hide other apps for whatever reason.
In your list of apps, drag any app down to the lock space that now appears in the bottom right. It will only be shown as a lock until you unlock it; you will then see the apps available in your new Private Space. After that, you should probably delete it from the main app list. Dave Taylor has a rundown of the process and its quirks.
It’s obviously more involved than Apple’s “Hide and Require Face ID” tap option but with potentially more robust hiding of the app.
Hiding passwords and OTP codes
A second form of authentication is good security, but allowing apps to access the notification text with the code in it? Not so good. In Android 15, a new permission, likely to be given only to the most critical apps, prevents the leaking of one-time passcodes (OTPs) to other apps waiting for them. Sharing your screen will also hide OTP notifications, along with usernames, passwords, and credit card numbers.
Enlarge/ The Android 15 logo. This is “Android V,” if you can’t tell from the logo.
Google
Google’s I/O conference is still happening, and while the big keynote was yesterday, major Android beta releases have apparently been downgraded to Day 2 of the show. Google really seems to want to be primarily an AI company now. Android already had some AI news yesterday, but now that the code-red requirements have been met, we have actual OS news.
One of the big features in this release is “Private Space,” which Google says is a place where users can “keep sensitive apps away from prying eyes, under an additional layer of authentication.” First, there’s a new hidden-by-default portion of the app drawer that can hold these sensitive apps, and revealing that part of the app drawer requires a second round of lock-screen authentication, which can be different from the main phone lock screen.
Just like “Work” apps, the apps in this section run on a separate profile. To the system, they are run by a separate “user” with separate data, which your non-private apps won’t be able to see. Interestingly, Google says, “When private space is locked by the user, the profile is paused, i.e., the apps are no longer active,” so apps in a locked Private Space won’t be able to show notifications unless you go through the second lock screen.
Another new Android 15 feature is “Theft Detection Lock,” though it’s not in today’s beta and will be out “later this year.” The feature uses accelerometers and “Google AI” to “sense if someone snatches your phone from your hand and tries to run, bike, or drive away with it.” Any of those theft-like shock motions will make the phone auto-lock. Of course, Android’s other great theft prevention feature is “being an Android phone.”
Android 12L added a desktop-like taskbar to the tablet UI, showing recent and favorite apps at the bottom of the screen, but it was only available on the home screen and recent apps. Third-party OEMs immediately realized that this bar should be on all the time and tweaked Android to allow it. In Android 15, an always-on taskbar will be a normal option, allowing for better multitasking on tablets and (presumably) open foldable phones. You can also save split-screen-view shortcuts to the taskbar now.
Left: private space appears at the bottom of the app drawer. Middle: tapping on it brings up a biometric prompt. Right: passing the prompt reveals more apps.
Google
Theft detection will lock the phone if it detects a rough movement.
Google
The predictive back gesture will show you where “back” goes.
Google
An Android 13 developer feature, predictive back, will finally be turned on by default. When performing the back gesture, this feature shows what screen will show up behind the current screen you’re swiping away. This gives a smoother transition and a bit of a preview, allowing you to cancel the back gesture if you don’t like where it’s going.
Android is only now getting around to implementing this, despite it being a feature that iOS has had for years. It will still be a long road, as individual app developers must opt into it. At least you no longer have to dig into the developer settings to turn it on. Have Android’s third-party developers used the two-year rollout to implement the feature in their apps? Mostly no, but we’re hoping the Android system apps should at least support it now, and maybe even some Google apps will, too.
Because this is a developer release, there are tons of under-the-hood changes. Google is a big fan of its own next-generation AV1 video codec, and AV1 support has arrived on various devices thanks to hardware decoding being embedded in many flagship SoCs. If you can’t do hardware AV1 decoding, though, Android 15 has a solution for you: software AV1 decoding.
You’ll never guess who built it: VideoLAN, aka the people who make the extremely popular, plays-everything, open-source VLC media player. Google says, “This support is standardized and backported to Android 11 devices that receive Google Play system updates.” That means basically every Android device will now support AV1, which is great not just for phones but cheaper TV boxes as well.
Finally, the second beta isn’t just for Pixels. Google says Honor, iQOO, Lenovo, Nothing, OnePlus, OPPO, Realme, Sharp, Tecno, Vivo, and Xiaomi are all shipping betas for certain phones, too. For Pixels, Android 15 Beta 2 should go live sometime today.
Enlarge/ The Android 15 logo. This is “Android V,” if you can’t tell from the logo.
Google
It’s that time of year again. Android is going to start its ~8-month-long beta process with the release of a new major OS version. The Android 15 Developer Preview is out today for the Pixel 6, 7, and 8, Pixel Fold, and Pixel Tablet. This release should mark the end of major OS support for the Pixel 5 and 5a series.
So what’s new? It’s hard to know too much with only the simple text descriptions we’re getting, but we have a few bullet points. “Partial screen sharing” will let users share or record individual app windows instead of the entire screen. Phones don’t have much of a difference between an app window and a full screen, but it would be nice if this blocked incoming notifications from showing up on your screen share. It would also be nice for tablets.
Android is surfacing an API that supports the Linux kernel’s fs-verity feature. This will let you store a read-only file on a read-write file system and cryptographically sign it to ensure it hasn’t been maliciously tampered with. Google apparently wants app developers to use this, saying, “This leads to enhanced security, protecting against potential malware or unauthorized file modifications that could compromise your app’s functionality or data.“
Google says there are improved camera controls for apps and more “dynamic performance” controls that detect if your phone is overheating and let apps respond accordingly.
There’s also a schedule that says we’re getting at least six developer releases. The first “beta” will be out in April; “platform stability,” when APIs are finalized and developers should get to work, is in June. The final release on the timeline is sometime after July, depending on how development goes.
We’ll know more about Android 15 when the actual documentation gets released and we can try some software. As always, these first Developer Preview releases are limited to low-level features for app developers, giving interested parties time to support new functionality before the OS releases in Q3. User-facing features will come later—hopefully. The Android 14 release was one of the smallest on record, so we’re hoping there are more meaningful improvements this year.
It sure looks like Android 15 is going to have lock screen widgets. The Android 14 QPR2 beta landed the other day, and Mishaal Rahman over at Android Authority found a hidden unfinished feature that brings back lock screen widgets. We’ve expected this to happen since Apple’s big lock screen widget release with iOS 16.
Rahman found a new “communal” space feature that resembles lock screen widgets. After enabling the feature and swiping in from the right of the lock screen, a pencil icon will pop up. Tapping the icon opens up a widget list, allowing you to move some widgets to the lock screen. Right now, in this unfinished state, the default lock screen clock and notification panel UI don’t know how to get out of the way yet, so you get a pile of widgets with the usual lock screen UI on top. It’s a mess.
Any time one smartphone operating system does something, the other tends to copy it, and iOS added lock screen widgets in 2022. Two years later is plenty of time for Google to adjust and copy the feature. The thing is, Android added lock screen widgets in 2012 with Android 4.2. Google removed the feature two years later in Android 5.0, so really, this is Android copying iOS copying Android. Some of this code is apparently making a comeback, as all the widgets available to the lock screen were ones that still had the 10-year-old “keyguard” flag set for Android 4.2.
The widget lock screen has strangely been named the “communal” space, and Rahman speculates this might be because this particular UI experiment was meant for tablets in a dock mode. “Communal” would mean that everyone in your house could see them, and maybe it would be good to limit the amount of personal data displayed without needing to pass the lock screen. This is just one of the feature experiments that happened to slip out the door, though, and it’s hard to imagine Google not letting phones do this, too, when iOS already does it.
