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Android 15 just reached a major milestone

Android 15 just reached a major milestone

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Platform stability has arrived.

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The Android 15 logo on a light green background.
One step closer to a final release in the fall.
Image: The Verge / Android

It’s beta software season, baby. Google is releasing Android 15’s third beta today, taking it one step closer to its final release. With this update, it reaches platform stability, meaning that APIs are finalized and developers can start testing their apps with this near-final version. Not much appears to have changed since the last beta dropped, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few interesting tidbits to still uncover.

In a blog post announcing the new beta, Google highlights one significant change to the passkey UI. Now, using a passkey with biometric authentication happens in one step rather than two the Google Password Manager prompt to use a passkey has been combined with the biometric input screen. There are also new fallback options you can access in the keyboard and text field drop-down menus if you accidentally tap past the passkey prompt. Handy!

Screenshot showing updated passkey UI.
One tap is better than two.
Image: Google

And apparently, there’s still more to uncover in Android 15 — even as it nears its final form. Android expert Mishaal Rahman discovered that it might be able to identify when a biometric model isn’t working well, automatically delete it, and then prompt you to reenroll. You could already do this manually, of course, but this would help people who don’t realize that a biometric redo could improve performance. As Rahman points out, there are a lot of factors that impact how well a biometric model will work, and reenrolling can often fix problems that result from a flaky model.

You can read up on all of the features coming in Android 15 or just go download it yourself. That’s a less risky proposition now that Android 15 is rounding third and heading for home. But if it’s a sense of living on the edge that you want, you could go ahead and download the iOS 18 developer beta, too, if you have an iPhone on hand. While Android is closing in on its final form, iOS 18 was only announced last week — beta season, indeed.