Why Android 15 cellular community safety adjustments are a no-show

Google lastly rolled out the steady Android 15 replace to Pixel gadgets at present, delivering many new options like Non-public House, app archiving, predictive again animations, and extra. Nonetheless, the steady replace doesn’t embody a number of the options we noticed throughout the Android 15 beta program, such because the entry level for the Machine Diagnostics app in Settings, in addition to the brand new mobile security measures that Google introduced at I/O. Right here’s why the Android 15 replace doesn’t characteristic these new mobile safety capabilities.

For a little bit of context, the primary beta of Android 15 launched a brand new settings web page referred to as “mobile community safety” underneath Settings > Safety & privateness > Extra safety & privateness. This web page was later renamed to “cellular community safety” in a later beta, which additionally added an outline that acknowledged “these settings assist shield your calls, messages, and information from outdated or unencrypted networks that might expose you to information theft or surveillance.”

On the cellular community safety web page, there have been two toggles: “community notifications” and “permit solely encrypted networks.” The “community notifications” characteristic allows you to “get notified when your machine connects to an unencrypted community, or when a community data your distinctive machine or SIM ID.” The “permit solely encrypted networks” setting improves the safety of your cellular community connections at the price of limiting your community choices in some areas, however emergency calls ought to nonetheless undergo.

As Google defined at I/O, these mobile security measures have been aimed toward “defend[ing] towards abuse by criminals utilizing cell website simulators to eavesdrop on customers or ship them SMS-based fraud messages.” The technical phrases for these Android 15 options have been Mobile Cipher Transparency and Identifier Disclosure Transparency, and so they’re designed to shield you from rogue “stingray” monitoring gadgets.

Whereas it’s true that these options are a part of Android 15’s supply code, they’re not out there by default as a result of they “require machine OEM integration and suitable {hardware},” in accordance with Google. Provided that these options appeared out there to Pixel customers throughout the Android 15 beta, although, it will appear cheap to imagine that Pixel telephones assist them. That’s not truly the case, because it seems, because the visibility of the “cellular community safety” settings web page on Pixel telephones was only a mistake.

It seems that none of the present crop of Pixel telephones — not even the 4 telephones within the Google Pixel 9 sequence — at the moment assist Android 15’s new mobile security measures. Google truly went forward and hid the “cellular community safety” settings web page from Pixel customers in Android 15 Beta 4 after which prevented it from showing in searches in Android 15 Beta 4.2, in accordance with an Challenge Tracker put up. In a now-deleted touch upon that very same Challenge Tracker put up, a Googler explicitly acknowledged that the visibility of Android 15’s cellular community safety settings is tied to {hardware} assist.

That remark was made earlier than the launch of the Pixel 9 sequence, leaving the chance that possibly Google’s newest gadgets assist the characteristic. Nonetheless, I confirmed at present that the web page doesn’t seem on even the Pixel 9 Professional after updating it to Android 15. It’s potential that may change in a future launch, although, as Google’s point out of {hardware} assist could consult with radio driver/HAL assist that it may implement with the assistance of its modem supplier (Samsung).

Google at I/O stated that it was “working with the Android ecosystem to deliver these options to customers” and that it “count on[s] OEM adoption to progress over the following couple of years,” so hopefully these new mobile security measures will truly make their strategy to some Android gadgets within the close to future.