Pixel phones get a major kernel upgrade with Android 15 QPR2

All Tensor-powered Pixels are now running Linux kernel 6.1 after updating to Android 15 QPR2 Beta 1!

I reported that this kernel upgrade would happen back in January, but it's finally here!

🏠Google is preparing to bring back a beloved customization feature from Android 11

Android 15 QPR2 may let you customize the shape of home screen icons once again on Pixel phones

More details + screenshots of the settings page for this can be found in this article.

🏃Here's how Health Connect will back up your health and fitness data

Google rolled out an update to Health Connect that adds a backup & restore menu, but it doesn't work yet.

Here's how to access the feature so you're ready when it does, though.

UPDATE: It turns out that Health Connect exports DO work ... it's just the initial export that's broken! Subsequent exports work!

This means you can finally backup & restore your health and fitness data stored with Health Connect.

Unfortunately, the exported database seems to be an unencrypted SQL file, so be careful where you store it.

Google rolls out Scam Detection to protect you from phone scams

Scam Detection is a new feature that detects and warns you about attempted phone scams as they happen.

More details can be found over on Android Faithful.

Google Play Protect adds live threat detection to warn you about dangerous apps in real-time

Live threat detection uses on-device machine learning models to detect potential stalkerware apps. It's rolling out now to the Pixel 6+.

More details can be found in this article.

🔐Google's new Android app helps you verify you're chatting with the right person

Google is rolling out Android System Key Verifier, which will power the contact verifying feature in Google Messages that Google announced last month.

More details can be found in my latest article for Android Authority.

💬Google's new app will help warn you about nude images in Messages

Google is rolling out a new Android System SafetyCore app that’ll power Sensitive Content Warnings in Google Messages

More details on this app can be found in this article.

👓The Google Glass companion app might find a new life with Android XR

If you're wondering what that mysterious Android Glasses Core app that appeared in Android 15 QPR2 Beta 1 is, here's some details of its history + never-before-seen screenshots.

🗨Android 15 QPR2 may add a dedicated settings page for backing up contacts

The new contacts storage page will make it easier to choose which account you want to back up your contacts to.

More details + a screenshot of this page can be found in this article.

🖱⌨️Google is preparing to make keyboard and mouse support even better in Android 15 QPR2

The company is working on new features like bounce key threshold customization, repeat keys, and more.

Details + screenshots of these new features can be found in my latest article on Android Authority.

Many users have asked me: What are the pros and cons of using Android's upcoming Terminal app to run Linux apps versus something like Termux?

Here are the differences, as explained by a developer of Termux:

"Advantages:

1. The VM will have standard Linux Distributions, so all the packages of the distro should be downloaded from its packages repositories. Termux only provides ~2000 most popular packages in its repositories, other distros can have 10,000-1,00,000 packages. If running under proot-distro in Termux, then one can have similar amount of packages, but everything runs under proot, which is slow, and not all packages may work and proot is not stable on old devices.

Disadvantages:

1. The VM will have performance loss due to KVM usage compared to Termux running natively.

2. The VM will be isolated from the Android system, this is where most of the problems lie. I doubt external storage (/sdcard) will be allowed to be accessible directly from inside the VM, so use cases of users processing files on their storage, like downloading music/video/image files, etc with Termux and accessing them in other apps, would not be possible. The Android APIs won't be accessible inside the VM either, like ones which apps like Termux:API or Tasker uses, lot of users rely on them to automate things, a way to fix that would be to run a sshd server in Termux and then connect to it from the terminal in the Linux app with ssh and then run the commands, but that will cause some latency issues. Termux also supports on-boot tasks for its own commands, there may be some way to boot the VM at startup, depending on if there is external access, otherwise users would have to manually start the app.

3. The VM will be isolated, so any root access will be only for inside the VM itself, and not for root access to Android system, like Termux can get with su/sudo if rooted with Magisk, etc.

4. Terminal will be inside a WebView connected over the server, so should have slower performance than a native Terminal in Termux using native Android views. WebViews are generally slow for large amounts of text, especially for scrolling, like try opening the Android docs/source site on even a recent phone with ~8GB RAM, older phones often just crash the browser. One could run a sshd server in the VM and then connect to it from Termux with ssh and that should likely be faster, and should support multiple terminals at the same time. I don't think currently the VM app supports multiple terminals, that's another difference, although terminal multiplexers like tmux could probably be used inside the one terminal that's available.

5. Not all devices will support AVF, at least not for Android < 16 or higher, so Termux will still be needed on such devices. Additionally, running a whole Linux distro in a VM will require CPU, storage and memory in addition the one already being used by Android OS itself, so low end devices will likely have issues with performance or multi-tasking. Termux runs on Android host itself, and uses only < 100MB RAM, and 150MB (arch-specific)/230MB (universal) storage space by default, so runs great on even Android 5."

Thanks to agnosticapollo for taking the time to write this out!

How Android feature development is changing with Trunk Stable

You may have seen me mention something called Trunk Stable before. It's one of the BIGGEST changes to Android in years, but Google hasn't really talked about it much.

Here's how it changes things.

Thanks to the folks from Code with the Italians for having me on their show last week to talk about this!

Google confirms that the Terminal app will work in Android 15 QPR2 Beta 2!

A Googler on the Issue Tracker confirmed what I found, that the Terminal app in Beta 1 currently requires manual setup and a userdebug build.

Beta 2 will include a newer version of the Terminal app that can download the Debian image from online on regular user builds.

If you want to see what the Terminal app will look like once it's fully working, see this post.