Android 15 just reached a major milestone

It’s beta software season, baby. Google is releasing the third beta of Android 15 today, taking it one step closer to its final release. With this update, it achieves platform stability, which means the APIs are finalized and developers can start testing their applications with this almost final version. It looks like not much has changed since the last beta launched, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some interesting information to discover.

In a blog post announcing the new beta, Google highlights a significant change to the passkey UI. Using a passkey with biometric authentication now happens in one step instead of two – Google Password Manager’s prompt to use a passkey has been combined with the biometric sign-in screen. There are also new fallback options that you can access from the keyboard and text field drop-down menus if you accidentally tap past the passkey prompt. Practical!

And apparently, there’s still more to discover about Android 15 – even as he approaches his final form. Android expert Mishaal Rahman discovered that may be able to identify when a biometric template is not working welldelete it automatically and then prompt you to re-apply. You could already do this manually, of course, but this would help people who don’t realize that a biometrics redo could improve performance. As Rahman points out, there are many factors that affect how a biometric template works, and re-enrollment can often resolve issues resulting from an unstable template.