Today Google has released the first Developer Preview (DP) of Android 15, a day later than rumored. One more DP build is coming in March, followed by the first Beta in April, a second Beta in May, and then the “Platform Stability” phase kicks in in June ahead of the final release that will be… after July, that’s all Google is revealing right now. The company does say that from June there will be “several months” until the official release, for what it’s worth.
As always with an early DP, there isn’t a lot of new stuff baked in, and the things that are highlighted are mostly developer-focused. There will be support for partial screen sharing in Android 15, which means you can share or record just an app window rather than the entire screen.
Android 13 added support for connecting to MIDI 2.0 devices via USB, and Android 15 extends the support to virtual MIDI apps, letting composition apps control synthesizer apps as a virtual MIDI 2.0 device just as if they were a USB MIDI 2.0 device.
There are additional performance framework improvements too, and new extensions for more control over camera hardware and algorithms on supported devices as well as support for new data types in Health Connect. Files can be protected by custom cryptographic signatures in Android 15, ensuring they haven’t been tampered with or corrupted and protecting against malware or unauthorized file modifications.
As the pre-beta labeling implies, this build isn’t for everyone. It’s intended for app developers to play with and make sure their apps will work well with the upcoming release. As always, the Beta builds arriving from April onwards will be easy to enroll in by anyone with a Pixel.