Android is evolving as Google closes the gap with the iPhone. For many long-time Android users, those settings will have a negative effect when their phones lock for the first time. But for the vast majority, it will help keep you safe. As Google embarks on this mission to catch up, Samsung is poised to go much further.
Apple doesn’t always get it right, as this month’s privacy backlash shows all too well, but the reality is that users are still safer and more secure on an iPhone. Android is more open to attack — period. Apple’s safeguards come down to control. Stringent App Store policies, less flexibility for apps to operate on devices, tighter privacy rules, ownership of hardware and software enabling end-to-end oversight.
At the heart of Android’s difference has been the ability to download apps. This open ecosystem is the cause of many, but not all, Android security flaws. “We are looking for a balance,” says Sundar Pichai. “We believe in choice,” but “it’s like a car seat belt, we add protections so you can use it safely. “
Apple does not offer users the option to take risks. There has never been any form of loading aspects. At least not until the EU imposed more flexibility last year. A measure that led Apple to warn that “loading aspects on the iPhone would put all users at risk, even those who make a planned effort to protect themselves by downloading applications only through the App Store”. Allowing skin uploads would spark a flood of new investments in iPhone attacks, incentivizing bad actors to expand the team and expertise to attack the security of iPhone devices on an unprecedented scale.
All change. Google has been tightening restrictions part by part over the last 12-months. A cull of low-quality, high-risk Play Store apps, expanding Play Protect across all apps regardless of origin, enhancing its Play Integrity API to treat apps differently from outside Play Store and soon to treat them differently based on the OS version on the phone, and more open warnings on the risks from sideloading.
All this culminates with Android 15, which now bets on a Pixel close to you and will also be launched on Samsung. The update incorporates all of the above settings into an operational formula designed with security in mind. It adds coverage against harmful connections and live risk detection, AI to monitor an app’s actual habit on your phone, flagging hazards before central tracking detects problems.
All of which is a hammer-blow for the open sideloading of the past. “Android 15’s new sideloading restrictions could signal a shift for the Android ecosystem,” Android Police says, “challenging its historically open nature. These tighter security measures protect average users from malicious apps but risk alienating power users, amateur developers, modders, and enthusiasts who depend on Android’s flexibility. With Android 15 rolling out… the backlash to these changes quickly becomes apparent.”
While Samsung embarrassingly past due to the Android 15 party, with its One UI 7 beta released just before the holidays, it is in a position for a wider release along the Galaxy S25 release a month from now. And Samsung looked at Android 15’s safety restrictions and doubled them. The Galaxy maker is going much extra through providing the closest Android we’ve ever noticed to Apple’s iPhone proposition.
Samsung has already gone down this path, more temporarily than Google, by violating maximum restrictions last year to make downloading difficult. Now, with its update to Android 15, “instead of downloading malicious apps, One UI 7’s new safe installation formula works together with Auto Blocker to send a warning when a user tries to download from an unauthorized source, alerting them to risks security”.
Equally important, Samsung is also doubling down on its Knox Matrix ecosystem with One UI 7, meaning the more Samsung devices a user has, the more secure they are. This doesn’t reflect Apple’s ecosystem very well, but it also makes it more difficult. to change Samsung for Pixels or other Androids without wasting the benefits. Apple’s walled garden comes to mind.
Make no mistake, this is just the beginning of the confusion between Android and iPhone. Just as Apple is opening up to default apps and non-Apple stores, Android and Samsung in particular are moving in the other direction. For almost all mainstream users, it’s just a smart thing to do. Samsung and Apple dominate the global high-end smartphone segment and the war has never been closer.
I expect Samsung to further lock down its Galaxy devices in 2025 and beyond, one small reset after another, making it even more difficult to drive without that seat belt. And this will increase AI security on devices and in the cloud, ushering in an entirely new risk landscape, just as AI-powered cyberattacks become the norm. In this new world there is no place for mobile phones to take risks. Hardcore Android users may not like it, but they will definitely have to get used to it.
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