Android 14 Beta 4 includes 'auto-confirm unlock' feature, fixes & more

Google released the Android 14 Beta 4 update on Tuesday and mentioned the fixed and acknowledged issues in the release notes.

Edited By: Shubham Verma | Published By: Shubham Verma | Published: Jul 12, 2023, 07:32 PM (IST)

Google has tweaked several APIs and systems to reduce background activities and improve efficiency for tasks like downloading large files. Further, Android 14 will bring back the “screen time since last full charge” feature in the battery settings menu.

techlusive.in Written By article news — Written By Shubham Verma

Google has released the Android 14 Beta 4 update which includes an ‘auto-confirm unlock’ feature, a variety of fixes, system performance improvements, and much more. The tech giant released the Android 14 Beta 4 update on Tuesday and mentioned the fixed and acknowledged issues in the release notes.Also Read: Android 14 now available: Top 14 features

“Android 14 includes behaviour changes to help improve performance, battery life, security, and privacy,” the company said.Also Read: Android 14 may feature new settings for region-specific preferences: Check details

Android researcher Mishaal Rahman on Twitter revealed that the new update includes an ‘auto-confirm’ feature, which unlocks the users’ phone automatically when they enter the PIN correctly. However, the PIN must be 6 digits or more to enable this.

Normally, when you enter the PIN to unlock your phone, you also need to hit the enter arrow. It is sort of a security check that your phone performs to see whether the PIN entered is genuine and not a result of guesswork. This is important because it stops any unwarranted use of the phone, especially when the hacker is trying all 4-digit combinations until one turns out to be correct. This feature is already available on some phones, but on Pixel you just cannot unlock the phone without pressing the enter button.

Image: Mishaal Rahman

Even though Google is working on this feature, it has taken care of all possibilities that might open opportunities for hackers to enter your device. That is why the feature is restricted to PIN codes of at least six digits, which makes the guesswork even more tiring and difficult. The feature is currently available to beta testers, who can go to lock screen settings to enable it and make that one requirement vanish.

Rahman also said that the update introduces new default profile picture options. The ‘Speech’ settings have been moved from Settings > System > Keyboard to Settings > System > Languages. Also, according to the Android researcher, users can see their phone’s manufactured year under Settings > About phone > Model.

“The ‘ring volume’ and ‘notification volume’ sliders are now completely separated in Android 14, with no way to merge them again. In older betas, the separation was controlled by a DeviceConfig flag, but that flag’s no longer in use,” he added.

— Written with inputs from IANS