Google rolls out 16 KB page size supported kernel for Pixel 8 series with Android 15 QPR1 Beta 1

Till now, Android has been “built and optimized to run with a 4 KB page size.” But by adding support for a 16 KB page size resulted in “overall performance boost of 5-10%,” though at the expense of ~9% additional memory usage including:

• 3.16% Lower app launch times while the system is under memory pressure
• 30% more significant improvements for some apps
• Reduced power draw during app launch by 4.56%
• Faster camera launch with 4.48% faster hot starts & 6.60% faster cold starts
• Improved system boot time by 1.5%

With Android 15, Google has refactored the OS “from the ground up to support running at different page sizes, thus making it page-size agnostic.” Developers have to recompile their apps for 16 KB page size devices, but the “same application binary can run on both 4 KB and 16 KB devices.”

The 16 KB page size supported kernel is already available in Android 15 QPR1 Beta 1 for the Pixel 8 series. However, this requires an unlocked bootloader AND wiping your entire userdata partition unless it's already formatted in EXT4. That's because, EXT4 block size must be <= of the system page size, while with F2FS, it must be equal. F2FS must have a matching block size and disk block size, and otherwise would require you to wipe each time you toggle the settings, unfeasible for development.

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Here’s an early look at Google’s revamped Pixel wallpaper app in Android 15 QPR1.

The new version will make it easier to customize your home screen and lock screen.

You can see a demo of this new UI in my latest article for Android Authority.

YouTube Premium Gets Expensive in India

YouTube launched the YouTube Premium in India back in 2019 at Rs. 129 a month, after 5 years, the company has hiked the price of the premium membership to Rs. 149. The student plan which was launched for Rs. 79 per month now costs Rs. 89

YouTube Premium family membership, which was launched for Rs. 189 a month that lets you share the account with 5 more family members now costs Rs. 299, which is a 58.2% Hike.

Existing premium subscribers are getting an email to agree to the new price, if no action is taken by the next billing date in September, your subscription will end before the new price takes effect from the billing date after that in October.

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If you unlock the bootloader of your Google Pixel 9 as I did, AICore refuses to download the Gemini Nano with multimodality model, breaking core features of the Pixel Screenshots app, Call Notes, and AI weather reports in Pixel Weather.

Pixel Studio doesn't use Gemini Nano, so it still mostly works.

Not surprising, but Google doesn't want people snooping around and messing with these features/the model.

In the future, I'm betting a lot of these ML models will be run in VMs, further isolating them. In fact, that's one of the things that the Android Virtualization Framework team has pitched to developers - being able to securely run proprietary ML models in a VM. And AOSP has just added flags for assigning TPUs to protected VMs, so we're getting there.

Apple Music and YouTube Music Joins hands for Seamless Playlist Transfer

Apple and Google join hands to "officially" enable seamless playlist transfer b/w their music apps. This new option arrives via Google and Apple both using the “Data Transfer Project” stack which was developed by the two companies as a part of the Data Transfer Initiative, of which both Google and Apple are members. This same ongoing partnership has also previously delivered the photo-sharing tool used to transfer photos and videos from iCloud to Google Photos.

Only the playlists you've created (including collaborative playlists that you own) are transferred. Music files, non-collaborative shared playlists and curated playlists, and folders in which you've organized your Apple Music playlists are not transferred. If the service you're transferring to doesn't have specific songs, then obviously they won't be transferred either.

Spotify can CRY in the corner and continue blaming Apple

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This is the Android 15 statue. It's the Bot holding a Vanilla Ice Cream cone. (Vanilla Ice Cream is the internal dessert name for Android 15.)

Source: Dave Burke on X

Google releases Android 15 update to AOSP

Android 15 is finally available for AOSP (Android Open Source Project). However, Google has NOT yet rolled out Android 15 stable for its own Pixel smartphones. It's likely delayed due to platforms bugs and is expected to roll out next month,
mid-October.

The Android 15 update brings several new features and changes like Private Space, which creates a separate profile that users can hide apps in, a screen recording detection API, predictive back gesture, changes to background activity launches etc. You can view full list of changes in Android 15 here.

Android 15 won't seem like a major update as many features will get shipped with QPRs releases such as Audio Sharing, a revamped Desktop Mode, the Tiny Taskbar, lock screen widgets etc. However, apart from Google, most OEMs don't incorporate platform changes in QPRs into their updates.

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Android 15 will make it harder for thieves to bypass FRP

Android has a security mechanism called Factory Reset Protection (FRP) that is activated when you first associate a Google account with your device. It kicks in when the device undergoes an untrusted factory reset, such as a factory reset triggered from recovery mode, asking user to sign-in to google account to confirm identity.

Android stores a key in a persistent data block that survives factory resets, so even if another factory reset is forced on the device, FRP will still kick in. However, there are ways for thieves to bypass it entirely. Thus, Google is making changes to FRP, making it much harder to bypass.

1. Enabling the OEM unlocking setting will NO longer prevent FRP from activating.
2. Adding a new Google account is blocked.
3. Setting a lock screen PIN or password is blocked.
4. Installing new apps is blocked.
5. Bypassing the setup wizard will NO longer deactivate FRP.
Click HERE to read about it in detail.

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Google Goes All-In with TSMC

Google tensor G4 chip manufactured by Samsung Foundry on its 4nm process. However, it was a minor upgrade over the Tensor G3 in the pixel 8 series as reflected by benchmarks & even the G4 itself is codenamed 'Zuma Pro' while G3 is 'Zuma'. G4 still utilizes Samsung's older FO-PLP packaging instead of the newer FO-WLP, which played a key role in resolving heating issues in the Exynos 2400—unlike its predecessors.

Now with Tensor G5, Google is not only switching to TSMC, but it will made it on the latest 3nm node & will also utilize TSMC's InFO-POP advanced packaging.
Tensor G6 to power Pixel 11 series, likely codenamed 'malibu', will also be manufactured by TSMC only on its latest 2nm process

FunFact: Apple Apple Foundational Models, both on device and server, for Apple Intelligence were fully trained on Google TPU clusters instead of NVIDIA.
Google's Axion, its first custom Arm-cores based TPU v5p for datacenters, is also made on TSMC 3nm N3E node

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Tiny little UI experiment in Android 15 that I enabled:

When music is playing, the three-dot menu button in the volume slider can turn into a waveform.

This obviously hasn't rolled out yet, but what do you think of it anyways?