Today, Google is rolling out Android 13 for Google Pixel smartphones, after months of developer previews and beta builds. It’s an update that polishes off many of the changes that Android 12 brought to the table, while also introducing a bunch of small, useful features across the board that aim to improve privacy, security, and usability. Alongside the update, the company has also announced that the Android 13 source code is now available in AOSP.
What’s new in Android 13?
Android 13 has a lot of new things, although many of them are incremental and smaller improvements. There are a lot of smaller improvements across the board that relate to different elements of the Android system, so here are some of our favorites!
Application Notification Requests
Apps can no longer send you notifications without asking you, and will need to ask for notification permission. You can then deny access to an app if you don’t want it to send you notifications, reducing the chance of unwanted spam. Be careful which apps you deny notification permissions to, though!
Application language preferences
For those who can be multilingual, the app’s language preferences can be the best addition to Android 13 for your uses. You can choose a specific language only for some specific applications. For example, let’s say your native language is German and your phone is in German. However, maybe the translations of a German app are weird or wrong, it might be easier to set the app language to another language you understand and it’s more likely to have correct translations.
Copy and paste images, text, videos and URLs and paste them on your tablet
You can now copy content such as images, text, video, and URLs and paste them onto your tablet. This can be used for photo creation, or even to quickly and easily transfer a URL from one device to another.
New media controls
Android 13 has some key updates for your media controls. These media controls are still located between the quick settings menu and the notification panel, but the widget itself is much larger now. It also has a wavy progress bar. Wow!
More granular permissions for accessing media files
Currently, all apps on your Android device can access files on your phone’s storage with the READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission. This permission, however, will allow apps to access all types of media files on storage. For example, an audio player app will have access to your photos with this permission, which is quite unnecessary. But Google is changing that by introducing three new permissions with Android 13:
- READ_MEDIA_IMAGES (for images and photos)
- READ_MEDIA_VIDEO (for videos)
- READ_MEDIA_AUDIO (for audio files)
If a particular application requests access to more than one type of media file, you’ll see a single dialog to grant both permissions like this:
More material color options
Android 13 adds several new colors and theme options to the Wallpaper & Style app on Pixel devices. You can now choose from four pages of background colors and base colors, bringing the total number of background colors and base colors to 16. In contrast, the Wallpaper & Style app previously only offered four colors each.
Photo Picker API
The new Photo Picker API is an extension of Google’s existing document picker. It works by leveraging the Android system to select documents on the device that are then selectively shared with the app in use, rather than the app having wider storage access to files on the device itself. This way, an app can access photos or videos on your phone without having broader access to the rest of your phone. Photo Picker is also being rolled out to older Android devices via an update to Google Play Services.
What else is new?
What we’ve shown above isn’t all new, but it’s some of our favorite features so far. We’ve already documented everything you can expect to find in Android 13, covering everything we’ve found in every beta and developer preview.
Which Google Pixel phones are being updated to Android 13?
- Google Pixel 4/4 XL
- Google Pixel 4a/4a 5G
- Google Pixel 5/5a 5G
- Google Pixel 6/6 Pro/6a
If for any reason you don’t receive the update once it starts rolling out, or you don’t want to wait for Google to release the update, you can install it manually. If you’ve unlocked your device’s bootloader, you can manually install your device’s OTA image or factory image, or use Google’s web-based Android Flash tool to automate the process. In any case, download the Android 13 image for your device and you can install it as well.
When will other phones get the Android 13 update?
Since Google’s major OEM partners have already had pre-release access to the source code, its engineers have already begun the process of forking the OS to add custom features and UI tweaks. Smaller OEMs, independent developers, and other entities without pre-release access can take a look at the Android 13 source code today to analyze or base their work on top of the new release. Unfortunately, we can’t provide a definitive timeline on when each OEM will release an Android 13 update for their devices, but we can list some of the devices we suspect will receive the update soon based on whether a beta update has already been rolled out or not made available
Here are the devices that have received Android 13 developer preview or public beta and are therefore expected to receive the stable update soon:
- Samsung Galaxy S22/S22 Plus/S22 Ultra
- OnePlus 10 Pro
- Asus Zenfone 8
- Lenovo Tab P12 Pro
- Nokia X20
- OPPO Find X5/Find X5 Pro/Find N
- Realme GT 2 Pro
- Sharp Aquos Sense6
- Tecno Camon 19 Pro 5G
- Vivo X80 series
- Xiaomi 12/12 Pro/Pad 5
- ZTE Axon 40 Ultra
Of course, we don’t know exactly how close each OEM is to releasing a stable update for these devices, but we do know that some are very close.
Samsung, as always, is doing its thing. The company announced its One UI 5 beta a while ago, but then dropped the beta randomly in select countries without any warning. The first beta version of One UI 5 has a lot of interesting changes that we described in practice.
In Google’s announcement post, the company confirms that devices from “Samsung Galaxy, Asus, HMD (Nokia phones), iQOO, Motorola, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Sharp, Sony, Tecno, Vivo, Xiaomi and more” they will receive the update. “Later this year,” though it’s not clear if he’s referring to a stable update or a beta version.
Looking at Android 14 and beyond
With this release, Google will now set its sights on Android 14, and beyond. We don’t really know what to expect, other than the fact that her code name seems to be “Upside Down Cake.” It is still unclear whether the company will work on an interim release on Android 12L, but we will have to wait and see.