I can’t be the only one asking myself this question: remember when Android OS updates were exciting? You’d get the notification, initialize the update only to have the phone tell you that it doesn’t have enough battery, so you’d rush to get your charger and watch in anticipation as that download bar filled up. Then the phone restarted and we were there: in the future.
Sure, said future didn’t always meet our expectations. But when I draw the line, I’ve got a lot more fond memories of my smartphones updating and becoming upgraded than not. And now, with Android 15, I’ve got a memory in stark contrast with those. Because Android 15 feels undercooked.
Android 15 seems… Familiar?
As expected, Pixel phones have gotten Android 15 early. | Image credit — PhoneArena
POV: I was chillin’ around, browsing this very website, when I saw that our own Johanna had published the story that Android 15 is live on Pixel phones. I instantly checked for software updates on my phone and surely enough: Android 15 was ready to be downloaded and installed.
Naturally, I had to plug my phone into the charger and wait around, so I played a bit of the classic Knights of Pen and Paper on my PC while waiting for the update to be done. It took a bit of questing around, but at one point I noticed that my phone was restarting.
The Google logo on the loading screen was the same. Reboot time had not changed. My home setup was the same as ever — which is a good thing, actually, but still. I waited for a bit, hoping for some sort of prompt or, well, something to happen. But no. Nothing did.
At this point, I actually startled myself and went into Settings to verify if the update had actually gone through. And yep, it said Android 15 right there under System.
Huh.
Then why did it look, feel and behave exactly like Android 14?
Don’t get me wrong: I’m perfectly aware that tons of tiny little changes and improvements have been made under the hood. I’m probably going to feel the impact of those in the next week or so. But on a surface level — a.k.a. the level that makes an initial impression and as such has a severe impact over people’s opinion — this might as well be Android 14.5.
Yes, I know, I’m late to this joke’s bandwagon, but give me a break — I wrote it at about 1AM last night, just when everybody else probably did so too.
So what does Android 15 actually do?
Android 15 brings new stuff to foldables, but a foldable I own not (yet). | Image credit — PhoneArena
Typically, when a new version of Android drops, there is usually a prompt or notification, waiting to tell you all about what is the latest with the OS. Not only that, but with Pixel phones in particular, you also have the Pixel Tips app, which usually gets updated with new info when an OS upgrade happens.
This time around I had neither. Which is probably something that Google needs to work on, but still: I wanted to figure out if Android 15 actually did something to my phone or not. So, I went over the press release.
What was odd is that Google only highlighted a couple of changes:
- Two new forms of phone theft protection
- Private space
- Updates to how Android works on foldables (which I’m not using, so I won’t comment on)
- Improvements to low light photography (which may or may not be a Pixel exclusive thing)
I had to search for these as apps and then within Settings, since the system didn’t bother to tell me about them in any meaningful way. Ultimately, the new security settings boiled down to me setting two more toggles to “On”, which isn’t exactly thrilling.
Private space is weird. The way it’s explained made me feel like I need a secondary Google account in order to use it. Look, Google, all I wanted was a way to get sensitive apps and files out of my way — I didn’t need a soft gateway into having a midlife crisis and starting a second life. Point is — this felt way too overengineered for me to use.
Low Light boost is sort of cool, I guess
So, this thing can see better in the dark now. | Image credit — PhoneArena
The other new thing, which would theoretically make an impact for photo nerds like me, is improved night shots. Since I wasn’t expecting this to be part of the update, I haven’t really prepared a pre-update photo, but I got three ones to show to you guys:
Jack Frost in light, in dark and then again with Night Sight on the Pixel 6a. | Images credit — PhoneArena
So, is there an improvement? You tell me. I think that the photos taken in dark conditions appear a bit sharper than in the past. The photo taken with Night mode on in particular has a totally different color profile, which doesn’t jive well with me, but in terms of quality — I can’t say I find much difference between it and the one that’s taken in Standard mode, in the dark.
What I can say after some more experimentation is this: the camera seems to take less time to figure out what subject I’m trying to shoot in darker conditions specifically. If it does figure it out, the photo comes out a bit sharper, but still lacking detail. If it fails to understand the subject, though, you’ll get the typical smartphone-versus-darkness mumbo-jumbo that we’re accustomed to seeing.
But here’s the thing: this could’ve been a regular old update to the camera app, or if that reliant on integral core updates — just another increment to Android 14. Otherwise it seems like Android 15 boils down to some new toggles I can tap and a slight boost to the camera app.
Oh, wait. App Archiving is cool, if not exactly new. This is probably the most underrated feature that Android 15 brings.
When you Archive an app on an Android phone, the said application gets almost completely uninstalled. The key difference is that once archived, that app’s key data — such as login info, settings or save games — will remain backed up on your phone. This, in turn, makes it really easy to re-install an app, should you need it in the future again.
How to Archive apps on Android 15:
- Go to Settings
- Open up Apps
- Navigate to an application you want to archive
- On the central UI element, leftmost, you should see an “Archive button”
- Tap it and you should be good to go!
- Note: If you don’t see an “Archive” button, that is either a system app that your phone needs in order to function properly or one that doesn’t support app archiving. The latter are a rare instance, but do exist all the same.
So, that’s really cool and helpful! However, I’ve got two issues with it:
- It’s not exactly a new feature. We’ve seen this on other phones in the past numerous times and if anything, it should’ve been added to Android as a staple feature ages ago.
- I literally needed this just minutes before I got the update and I didn’t get to use it, and I hate that so much.
But other than these handful of features and a volume slider that seems to have had a growth spurt, nothing much has actually changed with the update.
So then, is Android 15 worth upgrading to?
I mean, even the introductory image looks bland. | Image credit — Google
Yes! Absolutely! Of course! Always! Whenever you have an OS update, upgrade or security patch, you should apply that as soon as possible. These are the things that keep your phones alive and your data safe. Android 15 is as an integral part of that as it gets.
But this article isn’t about that at all. It’s about Android 15 being boring.
Not only that, but it is also guilty of not fixing errors that were previously existent in Android 14. Now, to be completely honest: this may be just due to caching issues with my particular unit, so I won’t specify anything beyond this point. By the way, I’ve made a reminder to come back and update this section with new info down the line.
Toggles, over-engineered niche features and bucket loads of tiny improvements are just not as exciting as UI changes, huge feature drops or design philosophy updates. These few, minor new additions, however, are what Google chose to tell us about in its blog post. So that’s what we’re going with, just like any other person would.
Again: I’m certain that there’s exciting stuff happening on the backend, so in my opinion, Google should’ve absolutely told us about that too. I mean, the Big G even kept quiet about App Archiving, which I find to be way more useful than Private Space.
The big question here is as follows: should this have been Android 14.5 instead? My honest opinion is: yes, it absolutely should have been. The point of a major OS upgrade is that it can be felt throughout the entire system. It is 2024: we have huge events surrounding things like mobile operating systems and people go to those gatherings, because they get excited about seeing what the future of tech holds. But this time around, with Android 15, there’s just not much to get excited about.
I think that Google should’ve kept Android 15 in the pot for a bit longer, enriching the update in the process. We should’ve gotten at least one killer feature, at least a few super-useful — as in, ones that we can actually use — ones and then, those that we actually ended up getting would’ve made for sweet icing on the cake, for sure.
But then again, it’s not like we didn’t know that Android 15 was going to be like this.
What we’ve got right now, however, isn’t bad. Yes: it’s not exciting. But I’m sure that the numerous changes and improvements that are working hard in the background of your phone’s system will end up laying the groundwork for even greater things to come.
It’s just that waiting for the future to happen isn’t as exciting as seeing it unfold in front of your very eyes after you’ve restarted your phone, you know?