With the release of a new Android 15 beta, new goodies are getting spotted inside of Google’s code. Thanks to the dedication of people who seem to love crawling through all of that, we get to learn what new features and changes Google may be cooking up for its upcoming OS.
Even though with Android 15 Beta 3 we have reached “platform stability,” that doesn’t mean Google is done adding or changing things. Just take the latest list from Mishaal Rahman as an example. According to his digging, Google is working on a few new things, such as a revamped settings menu, a device diagnostics feature, as well as a Adaptive Thermal feature.
Reworked Settings Menu
In a mockup of the possible change, the new settings menu is similar to what we see from Samsung’s One UI and Apple’s iOS. In settings, you have similar things paired into groups, instead of a single list of everything like Google’s Pixel phones currently have. This can help you locate items a bit quicker, though, if you ask me there has been too many settings on all of these phone for at least the past 10 years. I’m always lost in there.
Adaptive Thermal
A new tool/feature called Adaptive Thermal was also spotted, designed to enlist the help of the device user to help keep their phone cool when it begins to overheat. When working, should the device start to overheat, it could send an alert to the user to take actions to help cool it down, and in turn, keep it performing optimally. Additionally, the phone itself would take action, like by throttling the CPU, to help keep things running smoothly.
According to the details that were dug up, when enabled and things are getting hot, Adaptive Thermal will check the battery temperature every 5 minutes to see if things are improving. If not, “emergency” state is entered and the phone presumably takes increased actions to keep itself cool. Lastly, should things continue to not improve, the user will be alerted that the phone will soon shut itself down to protect its own components.
Device Diagnostics
For those who appreciate knowing about their device in and out with regards to performance and components, it appears Google is also working on a user-facing Device Diagnostics settings menu, previously written up back in April. Capable of displaying storage status and battery status, it’s not shown via an enabled settings menu that tests for the touchscreen and display could also be available.
Also detailed is an Evaluation Mode, which requires a second device. When connected, the phone will run the same tests, then generate a report for the connected device. The whole point being, an Android 15 user could spare themselves a trip to the mall kiosk if they could diagnose and address their own hardware issues.
There’s no guarantee that these features will be released with the public launch of Android 15, but if we were to hope for one in particular, it would be that revamped settings menu. That would be solid.