Android 13 is officially out now. Also known as Android Tiramisu, this is the latest version of the Android operating system that will soon be launched to eligible smartphones. It means new smartphones coming to Nepal will have this system soon.
Last year’s update, Android 12 was one of the biggest Android updates to date, and the latest update, Android 13 has been built on the foundation laid by its predecessor.
Android 13 has focused on refinements and has brought subtle changes in the user interface (UI). Based on Material You, introduced last year, the update focuses on three major things: personal, private and beyond the phone.
Let’s get into the details to know more about the latest update.
1. Personal
The personal feature allows the users to personalise the apps on their smartphone as per their style. With Material You, the users now can customise the apps by colour, theme and even language. The user can even customise the music player, which is something new and can be exciting.
- Android 13 also has a new media player that is customisable and displays album artwork on full display with a dancing playback bar.
- The user now has the freedom to assign different language settings to individual apps.
2. Private
Privacy and safety have always been an issue while using a smartphone. There are millions of apps and websites that people use on a daily basis and until the users provide access to their information, they are unable to use the app.
Last year’s update on Android made several changes to ensure the safety of the data and information of the users as much as possible. It also brought mic and camera access, approximate location and privacy dashboard which allowed more control to the users on limiting the access to their information. This year, Android 13 has brought some additional safety features for users.
- Photo picker: This is an important update for the users. This feature limits access to the media on the phone. To date, the different apps that the users have on their phones would request access to media in order to run. The new update now limits that access to only specific photos and videos instead of the whole media on the phone.
- Notification permission: This is another interesting update on Android 13. Android 12 had already reduced the influence of apps on the user’s privacy and now the user can control which app can send the notification. The apps will now need permission from the user to send the notifications. This can be a great upgrade as people use so many apps these days and get notifications from every single one of them, which can be irritating.
- Cleared clipboard history: This is also a good addition to the latest update. The user will now get an alert if any app has access to the clipboard. To prevent unwanted access, the history will also be automatically cleared after a period.
- Other privacy updates include notifying about bad apps that can potentially harm the device, checking the user’s password and alerting them if their passwords match with the known compromised passwords, spam protection, checking up on forgotten apps and intelligent on device security.
3. Beyond the phone
This feature on Android 13 is focused on connecting all of the devices together with features that enhance messaging, audio and multitasking experiences. Beyond the phone means that now the users are not limited to their smartphones only and can continue their tasks on other devices as well.
Some of the interesting features under this are:
- Messaging app streaming: This feature allows the user to send and receive messages even when the phone is out of reach by streaming the messaging apps directly to Chromebook.
- Cross-device copy and paste: This is a feature that will soon be available to devices supporting Android 13. It allows the users to copy contents like URLs, text or even pictures from one device and paste it onto another device.
- Enhanced audio: Android 13 offers spatial audio, which lets the user enjoy the sound from every direction. It also adopts Bluetooth low-energy audio which is said to improve audio quality and allow the users to broadcast media to multiple people at once.
- Multi-tasking on tablets: The taskbar has been updated on the latest Android 13. This allows the user to do two tasks at once. With this update on board, the user now can drop and drag any second app from the app library into a split-screen view directly from the taskbar.
So these are some of the major updates on the latest Android 13. As mentioned earlier, there are no huge upgrades this time, but there are lots of refinements that were missing in last year’s update. These little improvements over last year’s big changes make the use even better and easy.
Besides these, there are also lots of miscellaneous changes on Android 13 which makes the whole revamp of Android 12 even better.
