Android 12 is only four months old, and the Android 12L tablet version is still in its infancy, and Google is already around the corner with the first developer preview of Android 13 for Pixel smartphones.
The current schedule calls for two such early previews before the first beta release is scheduled for April 2022. Platform stability should be achieved in June, the final release of Android 13 should take place in August 2022.
With Android 13, Google once again wants to address the issues of data protection and access rights for applications.
Android 13 gets a new selection menu for photos and videos that allows the user to share this content to an app without granting it access to the storage. With this proposal, it is no longer necessary to grant general permission to all the multimedia content of your mobile when you use certain apps.
Additionally, apps will now ask for permission when searching for “Nearby Wi-Fi devices.” In this way, Android 13 will be able to connect to devices using the Wi-Fi connection without having to use GPS location permissions.
Already in Android 12, Google made it possible to replace the standard icons of apps with icons with a uniform design. In Android 13, those monochrome icons should be able to pick their accent color from their home screen background, even if the app isn’t made by Google.
Another interesting feature that comes under the hood has to do with language preferences. Android currently uses the system language in apps, but that will now change. According to Google, with Android 13, it will be possible to choose a different language for each application, something ideal for multilingual users.
There are also new features related to the user interface. The adoption of Material You in Android 12 allowed users to match the color and layout of system icons to that of the wallpaper. However, third party applications were left out of this.
Android 13 wants to take this feature to the next level. The new system will allow third-party application icons to adapt to the system background. However, developers must be the ones to provide compatible icons to enable this function.
In addition, Android 13 Project Mainline is to be strengthened, i.e. updating apps and system components via the Play Store.
As usual with such early releases, Google is more focused on providing new APIs than user-facing features. The version is also not distributed over-the-air but must be flashed manually. Compatible are the pixel models from Pixel 4; alternatively, Android 13 can also be used in the Android Studio emulator.
