Sorry for a kinda clickbait title but it is what it is. I just watched a video about Android 15 changes and a lot of them are either not important or straight up bad.
I want to specifically mention increased background sensor usage (such as microphone) and the Find My Device network. These are serious privacy issues that just make lives of custom ROM developers and users harder by having to disable more and more stuff (that’s turned on by default of course), as well as a contribution to ewaste generation and general decrease of battery life.
I guess we are getting into the era of complete death of digital privacy and absolute surveillance. This is scary but not too unrealistic I guess. I just hope the devs of privacy-focused ROMs will be able to do something about it and purge these changes.
Can you please not editorialize the post title when you make the video your post link?
Could they just please post an article instead of a video with 10% info, 90% drivel?
They treated us like cattle and most of us take it.
Google is already angling to gut AOSP IMHO
They got what they want out of it.
I don’t know. The sensor stuff sounds pretty gross but the assistants are already listening all the time so they probably got a good understanding of the battery usage and hopefully privacy and later they point out they’ve made significant battery life improvements.
The Bluetooth find my device stuff is icky but I’m using my Bluetooth basically 24/7 so the auto re-enable settings means nothing to me. I honestly think most people turn it off and get annoyed later when it’s not on so that’s probably a pretty compelling improvement for them.
There were some security wins too like the private app area, encrypted network controls and network monitor warnings.
So privacy dead? No it’s basically the same. kinda just another megh update from Android. Moving forward but not wowing anyone. Google is too busy putting all their resources into ruining their trusted search reputation by making it lie to everyone to invest in a real android update.
I wish someone would shake up the phone market again so we could look forward to these updates again.
The assistants at least can be deleted or disabled. That sensors stuff cannot
The sensor stuff for the adaptive vibration? The first screen in that section of the video is a big feature card like they put in the upgrade tours which let’s you turn it on or off.
True. But idk if I was talking about that feature. I remember clearly hearing of a feature that cannot be disabled in the video. Though I just rewatched it and I didn’t find anything about it. Idk if it was removed from the video or I started having hallucinations (which is absolutely possible) but it doesn’t seem to be there anymore. Idk what else to say about it
It’s important to note that Android ≠ AOSP (Android Open Source Project). Most of the actually interesting features advertised in a new Android release won’t be available to you if your not installing Google Services.
E.g. heavily advertised features like Android 12’s “Material You” adaptive themes aren’t even available on AOSP and thus GrapheneOS, CalyxOS or LineageOS.
New privacy features often already existed for years on custom ROMs like LineageOS.
This is why since around Android 10 I’m not even following new Android releases, at least not beyond reading glancing over an article. I didn’t even notice my phone updated to from 12 to 13 (GrapheneOS) until I noticed the new background apps menu, which is pretty much all of the changes.
Edit: Being able to set a language per app is a great feature of Android 13.
Edit 2: As pointed out in comments below, my Material You example was wrong.
A better example are heavily advertised translation and image editing features, which are sometimes locked to Pixel and definitely locked to installs with Google Services. Same is true for apps like “Digital Wellbeing”, which don’t work on AOSP but its features are advertised as Android features.
tl;dr
Android updates are even more uninteresting if your using a custom ROM, because most features won’t even be available in open source Android.
Where do you get such information from? I’m using official LineageOS and it has Material You. There is indeed a separate implementation for Pixels afaik but the difference is very little
You’re right, my apologies for confidently spreading misinformation and thank you for pointing it out. Material You colors are available on LineageOS and GrapheneOS, probably CalyxOS too.
With Android 12 GrapheneOS and CalyxOS choosing different colors was not possible, maybe because they didn’t implement something at first, but with 13+ Material You works as intended.
I’ve edited my parent comment accordingly.
You’re right, thanks for correcting me.
Looking forward to the “Make all apps dark” setting
Afaik it already is in Android but it’s hidden. Also such changes won’t make Android a decent OS to store private information on or bring the device with you. It’s getting more and more privacy-hostile and imo it’s much more important than visuals
