Here’s even more information on four of the most exciting new features in Android 15

We’re probably just a few weeks away from the launch of Android 15, the next major version of Google’s Android operating system. We expect it to launch alongside the Pixel 9 series on August 13. With the release of the second beta of Android 15 at Google I/O in May, users already have access to many of the update’s key new features. However, there’s a lot more to come from Google. Android 15 features like Adaptive Touch, uniform dimmer, adaptive timeout and audio sharing are not available even in the latest beta 3 update, but we managed to gather more information about them, including screenshots of where they will appear in the settings.

Adaptive Touch: Intelligently adjust your Pixel’s touch sensitivity

Many smartphones already have some sort of touch sensitivity enhancement, usually called “screen protector mode” or something similar. This mode can compensate for thick or low-quality screen protectors that reduce your phone’s touch sensitivity (hence the name). However, this mode is something you have to actively enable to take advantage of, which means that it’s likely that some users who need it don’t have it enabled, or even know it exists.

To solve this problem, Google is working on an Adaptive Touch mode that automatically adjusts your smartphone’s touch sensitivity based on various factors. These factors include your environment, your activities, and whether or not you have applied a screen protector. When I first discovered this new mode back in March, I was unable to get the Adaptive Touch button to appear in the Settings app. However, after some tweaking in the latest Android 15 Beta 3 update, I was finally able to get the Adaptive Touch button to appear under Settings > Display > Touch sensitivity.

Unfortunately, I still don’t know exactly what environmental factors or activities trigger the new feature to change touch sensitivity. According to the code I analyzed, this feature is coming to the Google Pixel 9 series, so it’s possible that Google will announce the feature at the upcoming Made by Google 2024 hardware event on August 13. As mentioned, that’s also when we expect to see the stable launch of Android 15 as a whole.

Even Dimmer: more powerful replacement for Extra Dim

If your phone’s minimum brightness level still isn’t low enough for you, Android has a feature called Extra Dim that dims the screen beyond its minimum brightness. Extra Dim can be enabled via its dedicated Quick Settings tile or by navigating to Settings > Accessibilitybut it’s worth noting that, just like the screen saver mode, this has to be done manually. That means if you turn it on at night to dim the screen, you’ll have to remember to turn it off manually in the morning, unless you want to deal with a dimmed screen all day.

This is where Android 15’s new Even Dimmer mode could come in handy. This feature, which I first documented back in April , also lets the screen brightness go dimmer than normal, much like Extra Dim. Unlike that feature, however, Even Dimmer is meant to be maintained indefinitely rather than being enabled as needed. This feature is meant to allow the existing Adaptive Brightness feature to automatically dim the screen even more than usual when ambient light levels are extremely low, meaning you won’t need to manually enable Extra Dim at night.

In my original post about this feature, I was unable to get Even Dimmer to appear. However, with a bit of tinkering, I was finally able to get the toggle to appear under both Settings > Display And Settings > Accessibility. Additionally, I learned that after bringing up Even Dimmer, the Extra Dim feature disappeared from the list in both places, suggesting that Even Dimmer might serve as a replacement.

Adaptive Timeout: Automatically turn off your screen when you’re not using it

With the release of Android 15 Beta 3, Google quietly introduced the new Adaptive Timeout feature that I discovered back in April. The feature is currently only available on the Google Pixel 8 series and can be found by navigating to Settings > Display > Screen timeout. According to the description, this feature “automatically turns off your screen if you are not using your device.”

It sounds simple enough, but what “not using your device” means isn’t exactly clear. Many users who enabled this option (myself included) thought it wasn’t working at first, as we tested it by setting a longer idle timeout and then leaving our phones idle on a table. However, the feature actually seems to use your phone’s proximity sensor to check if there’s something in front of it. If there is, it shortens the screen idle timeout and turns off the display sooner.

This is why nothing happens when users leave their phone idle on a table. If you’re the kind of person who likes to set longer screen timeouts but often forgets to lock your phone before throwing it in your pocket or bag, then adaptive timeout can prove to be a useful security and battery-saving feature.

Audio Sharing: A new shortcut in the Bluetooth Quick Setup dialog

Finally, here’s a quick update on Android 15’s upcoming Bluetooth audio sharing feature that I documented back in April. When I first enabled the feature, the only way to start an Auracast stream was to navigate to Settings > Connected devices > Connection preferences > Audio sharingHowever, in Android 15 Beta 3, Google added a new way to start an Auracast stream using a button in the Bluetooth Quick Settings dialog.

After connecting my Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro to my Google Pixel 8 Pro and opening the Bluetooth Quick Settings dialog, a new Share audio The button appeared in the bottom left. Pressing this button launched an Auracast stream using the audio stream settings I had previously saved. The text on the button then changed to Audio sharing to reflect the fact that I was now broadcasting.

Between the time I first enabled this feature and today, Google also changed the wording of the Auracast notification as well as the audio sharing settings page, which you can see below.

Android 15 may seem like a minor update at first glance, but if you look closely, you’ll see that there are a lot of changes. Unfortunately, many new features aren’t available yet, as they’re either being held back for the launch of the new Pixel 9 series or are coming to a future update. Still, we’ll continue to document any changes we notice in these upcoming features so you know exactly how to use them when they become available.