Android 15’s virtual machine mandate is aimed at improving security

[phillynews215]

• Google is requiring new chipsets that launch with Android 15 support to implement support for the Android Virtualization Framework.
• The Android Virtualization Framework provides a secure and private execution environment for highly sensitive code and is required for Android’s upcoming Linux Terminal app.
• It’s already supported by many Android devices, however, no Samsung devices support the feature yet.

While the best Android phones certainly have the raw hardware to go toe-to-toe with the average laptop, most of them don’t have the right software features to replace them, even if you hook them up to a bigger screen. Google is working on turning Android into a more full-fledged desktop operating system, though, and part of those efforts include allowing for Android devices to run other operating systems in virtual machines. However, not every Android device supports the feature that enables virtual machine support, but thankfully, Google is requiring that new chipsets that launch for Android 15 will.

With the release of Android 13 in 2022, Google introduced a feature called the Android Virtualization Framework (AVF). The initial use case that Google envisioned for AVF is to provide a safe environment to compile security-sensitive code. For example, when the Project Mainline module for the Android Runtime (ART) is updated, certain code needs to be recompiled. Thanks to AVF, this code can be securely recompiled in the background by a stripped-down version of Android running in a virtual machine, reducing the long boot delay that would otherwise occur if the code were to be recompiled post-reboot.




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