Android 15 will bring the Bluetooth Auto-On feature, here's what it does
photo: freepik
- Google released the Android 15 Developer Preview a few weeks ago. The stable status of Android 15 is expected around the third quarter of this year. As experts start to dive deeper into the first few beta releases of Android 15, more features are being revealed every week.
Recently, it was discovered that Android 15 may not allow users to turn off Bluetooth for a long time. Android 15 can turn on Bluetooth the day after you turn it off. The aim is to increase the effectiveness of Google's Find My Device feature.
According to a new report from Android Authority, there are many references to a feature called Bluetooth Auto-On. As the name suggests, Android 15 can activate Bluetooth itself after some time.
When this feature is enabled, and users try to turn off Bluetooth on their device, they may see a dialog that says, Features like Quick Share, Find My Device, and device location using Bluetooth. This is to improve the effectiveness of Google's upcoming Find My Device network.
Google Find My Device is expected to launch next week. This feature allows users to track lost or stolen devices. This network of billions of Android devices relies mostly on Bluetooth.
photo: techno.id/yani andriyansyah
In this network, Android devices ping nearby compatible devices via Bluetooth, creating a large mesh network and allowing lost devices to be tracked. This is similar to how Samsung Find works on Galaxy devices.
The data is fully encrypted, so you don't need to worry about your device's location being tracked by others. Only you can track devices registered to your Google account. Additionally, only system apps can turn Bluetooth on or off, so no third-party apps can control it.
The Find My Device network won't be as effective if people turn off Bluetooth on their Android devices. So, Google might change the way Bluetooth works and turn off on Android.
In Android 14 QPR2, the dialog that says turn it on automatically tomorrow sometimes starts to appear when you turn off Bluetooth. Google may want to take it one step further with Android 15 by only pausing Bluetooth when you turn off its quick settings toggle.
However, the Bluetooth Auto-On feature is not yet active in any version of Android 14 or Android 15 that Google has released. So for you Samsung users, because it has its own Samsung Find network, similar to Google's Find My Device network, it remains to be seen whether Samsung decides to keep both active, keep using its own network, or integrate Samsung Find with Find MyGoogle Devices.