Android 15 Developer Preview 2 brings support for satellite messaging

Google released the first Android 15 Developer Preview last month, and today the second one is out. This is still not a public beta, the first one of those is set to arrive in April. Instead, like the first preview, it's also intended for developers to be able to check their apps against.

The big new feature introduced by Android 15 DP2 is support for satellite connectivity at the operating system level. The OS now includes some UI elements that are designed to "ensure a consistent user experience across the satellite connectivity landscape", Google says.

Apps can detect when a device is connected to a satellite, thus becoming aware of why full network services may be unavailable. There is also baked in support for SMS/MMS applications as well as preloaded RCS applications to use satellite connectivity for sending and receiving messages.

There are improvements for PDF viewing too, allowing developers to give their apps the ability to render password-protected PDFs and annotations, as well as letting you search, edit, and select things in PDFs. Local PDF viewing should also be faster and use less resources. The PDF renderer itself will be updated through the Google Play system updates, independently of Android version updates.

Additionally, the experience of using NFC to pay for things should be "more seamless and reliable", and automatic language switching for audio recognition has been improved. Developers can now also use an Android 15 function to have their app appear on the small cover screen of a flip-style foldable.

Apps in Android 15 will detect that they are being recorded, and there's newly added support for a loudness standard to help avoid loudness inconsistencies when switching between different audio content. Finally, the Do Not Disturb mode is getting more customizable, letting you give special treatment to some rules over others, and allowing rules to trigger things like turning the display black and white, turning on night mode, and dimming the wallpaper.

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