Android 15 Could Make It Harder to Disable Bluetooth

howtogeek.com:

There used to be a time, several years ago, when a lot of us would actually turn off Bluetooth if we weren't using it. Bluetooth wasn't as essential of a tool as it is today, and some users assumed that it would drain their phone's battery. Nowadays, though, most people keep Bluetooth on all the time. And as Bluetooth becomes even more essential, Google is making it harder to turn off.

As discovered by Android Authority, Google may add a "Bluetooth auto-on" feature to the upcoming Android 15 update. A string of code in a recent Android beta, when enabled, states that Bluetooth will "automatically turn on again tomorrow" after being disabled. Presumably, this feature won't be mandatory—if you want to turn off Bluetooth completely without your phone turning it back on, you can probably do so.

While we don't know a lot about this feature, it's probably a preparatory step for Google's Find My Device network. Google is currently rolling out its own mesh localization technology to compete with Apple's Find My service. Find My Device uses Bluetooth to detect nearby devices and anonymously report their location to Google's servers. Find My Device is less useful when phones have Bluetooth turned off, so for this to work as well as Google wants it to work, users need to have Bluetooth enabled.

Note that Apple also uses a "Bluetooth auto-on" feature to prop up its tracking network. If you disable Bluetooth on an iPhone, it'll turn itself back on after a day. This also occurs when disabling Wi-Fi on an iPhone, meaning that Google could introduce a "Wi-Fi auto-on" feature at some point.

"Bluetooth auto-on" isn't live in the Android 15 developer preview just yet, though Google might be working to flesh it out and launch it in a future beta build. The feature could trickle down to previous Android versions, too. Again, with products such as wireless earbuds and smartwatches being commonplace, it's rare for someone to actually turn off Bluetooth on their Android phones,