Home > News

Google Announces Upcoming Android 15 Release

By Laura Tucker
Android 15 Release Featured

Just under a week before the release of iOS 18, Google announced that it would be releasing Android 15 soon. While it’s not a huge change from Android 14, 15 still has some features to look forward to.

When Will We See Android 15?

When you will be able to download and use Android 15 depends on the manufacturer of your Android. To no one’s surprise, if you have a new Pixel 9 phone, you’ll be getting the update first, sometime in the coming weeks. Older Pixels will receive it next, from the Pixel 8 down to the Pixel 6. If you have a Samsung, Motorola, OnePlus, or other Android manufacturer’s phone, you’ll be seeing the update even later.

Android 15 Release Home Screen
Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Some of the news stories are deceiving, as there are headlines stating that Android 15 dropped September 3. In truth, the Android 15 source code was released to the Android Open Source Project. This is the open-source software stack for the Android mobile operating system. It includes the core components and source code that allow developers to create custom versions of Android. Google maintains AOSP and releases the source code for each new version of Android.

Changes to Android 15

If you’re looking to be really wowed by the Android 15 update, you will be disappointed. There aren’t any dramatic changes from Android 14 to Android 15. Yet, there are some features that you can look forward to.

Not surprisingly, AI features into Android 15. It adds an accessibility feature for vision-impaired people. Android’s screen reader, TalkBack, will use Gemini on supported devices to make digital images more accessible with audio descriptions. Use it on your camera roll photos, a photo someone messages you or includes in social media, or online product images. You can also have Chrome web pages read aloud to you.

Android 15 Release Apps
Image source: Unsplash

While we’ve all grown accustomed to using Shazam and similar tools to identify songs, Google’s “Circle to Search” feature can now check images as well. There’s no need to switch to a different app, as it can all be done in a matter of taps, and then you can resume your work or play. Also check out these speech-to-text apps to make dictating easier.

A unique new feature to Android 15 is the Android Earthquake Alerts System. Crowd-sourced technology to detect earthquakes provides warnings just before an earthquake starts. Tap your phone for tips on what to do next once it’s all over.

And finally, if you have a Wear OS watch, you can download a Google Map to access it through your watch. You won’t need to constantly check your phone to keep track of where you are – just check your phone. When you’re back online on your phone, you have more options.

If you’re unsure how to share your location on an Android, check out these options. If you have that covered but really want an Android smartwatch, learn about the best Android smartwatch options.

Image credit: Android

Subscribe to our newsletter!

Our latest tutorials delivered straight to your inbox

Laura Tucker Avatar
Laura Tucker
Laura has spent more than 20 years writing news, reviews, and op-eds, with the majority of those years as an editor as well. She has exclusively used Apple products for the past 35 years. In addition to writing and editing at MTE, she also runs the site’s sponsored review program.

Read next

When the SS Great Eastern laid the first working transatlantic telegraph cable in 1866, a message that had taken ten days by steamship suddenly crossed the ocean in minutes, and the financial markets of London and New York were forced, within a single trading week, to invent the modern concept of synchronised global price.
From below of blue starry sky over radio telescope and trees with leaves
The Big Ear telescope was scanning at 1420.4056 megahertz on the night of 15 August 1977, the exact frequency at which hydrogen atoms vibrate across the universe, because Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison had argued years earlier that any species trying to be found would broadcast on that channel — and then, for 72 seconds, something did.
In 2016, archaeologists dated two rings of snapped stalagmites in France’s Bruniquel Cave to 176,500 years ago, evidence that Neanderthals had walked 336 metres into darkness with fire and built architecture deep underground long before modern humans reached Europe
Otto von Bismarck was 74 when Germany adopted the world’s first national old-age social insurance program in 1889, setting the pension age at 70 after years of fighting socialists with bans, laws, and a promise few workers would live long enough to use
When cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov stepped out of his Soyuz capsule in March 1995 after 437 consecutive days aboard Mir, doctors recorded him at several centimetres above his pre-flight height, and his spine had become so unaccustomed to gravity that the recovery team carried him to a chair rather than risk the compression of letting him walk.
When Bell Labs engineer Karl Jansky pointed a rotating antenna at the sky in 1932 looking for sources of transatlantic radio static, he kept picking up a faint hiss that peaked every 23 hours and 56 minutes, and he eventually realized he had become the first human to hear the center of the Milky Way.
A contemplative scene with two scientists in a vintage laboratory setting.
When Harvard astronomer Cecilia Payne submitted her 1925 doctoral thesis arguing that the Sun was made almost entirely of hydrogen, the field’s senior figure Henry Norris Russell talked her into adding a line calling the result ‘almost certainly not real,’ and then published the same conclusion himself four years later to widespread acclaim.
When seismic waves from the Chicxulub impact reached what is now North Dakota roughly ten minutes after the asteroid struck, they appear to have triggered a ten-metre standing wave in an inland river that flung fish onto the bank and buried them under glass beads still falling from the sky.