Android 15 just reached a major milestone

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!

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.