Google today launched the Android 13 Go Edition following the Android 13 on Google Pixel phones launch with their announcement back in August 2022.

For those caught unaware, Android Go Edition is the version of Android, tailored for low end smart phones with less than 2GB of RAM. Does that make you nostalgic about those old days when Android 4 itself would run on 1GB RAM!!

Welcoming Android Go Edition phones to the world of auto updates

The highlight of this release is that now Android Go Edition phones also now come to the world of automatic updates! These phones also will now be more secure with critical security issues getting auto-fixed and pushed to the phones.

Material You layout to Android Go Edition phones

Now all the looks of your screen, from main screen, to lock screen to the color scheme, all can be customised to suite your style.

Content Discovery tuned to your use

Now with just a swipe, you will be able to browse all the content that you are used to seeing, reading or watching, present right there, intelligently curated just for you.

Notification Permissions

You can now customize the permissions of your notifications, whether they should sound or be silent or not alert at all, on a per app basis. This gets a lot more peace of mind than having the anxiety to look at your phone screen every time something beeps.

Let all of us having the Google Go Edition update to the latest and post what more can we discover from this release!

OnePlus has announced its stable release of OxygenOS 13, which is the next major update bringing Android 13 to OnePlus devices.

Google had earlier announced on the 15th of August 2022 that they had started rolling out Android 13 to the Pixel series of smart phones.

OnePlus has been beta testing OxygenOS with a few 100s of participants across countries for the past 3-4 weeks. With this announcement, they have now mentioned that OxygenOS 13 will be rolling out in a gradual manner, starting with the Beta participants, then OnePlus 10 Pro users and then to the other OnePlus devices.

They are holding a OxygenOS 13 Ask Me Anything Session where you can ask them anything about the new OxygenOS 13 till the 25th of September 2022, and their staff will begin answering all your questions from the following day.

Which devices will receive OxygenOS 13?

While OnePlus 10T got it with its launch, today it is already available for OnePlus 10 Pro. The Beta testing is already ongoing for OnePlus 8, OnePlus 8 Pro and OnePlus 9 RT and should soon be available for them. Other OnePlus devices which will soon be supported, as confirmed by OnePlus will be OnePlus 8T, OnePlus 9, OnePlus 9 Pro, OnePlus 9RT, OnePlus 10R, OnePlus 10T, OnePlus Nord 2, OnePlus Nord 2T, OnePlus Nord CE, OnePlus Nord CE 2, OnePlus Nord CE 2 Lite.

What is new in OxygenOS 13?

After long time rumors that OnePlus might merge their OS with ColorOS of OPPO, looks like finally they went against it. Which means, now on OnePlus will release their major versions every year along with Android launches.

With the current OxygenOS 13 though, here are the most usable and visible changes.

Design

• Aquamorphic Design theme colors for enhanced visual comfort
• Home screen world clock widget to show the time in different time zones
• Upgrades to Quantum Animation Engine 4.0, with a new behavior recognition feature, which recognizes complex gestures and provides optimized interactions

Efficiency & Performance optimization

• Introduces an option to make notifications more subtle and less distracting
• More markup tools for screenshot editing
• Sidebar Toolbox. You can open a floating window inside apps for smooth operation
• Optimizes Shelf. Swiping down on the Home screen will bring up Shelf by default. You can search content online and on your device
• Adds Dynamic Computing Engine to improve the system speed, stability, battery life, and app experience

Personalization

• Optimizes Bitmoji to offer more Always-On Display animations
• Optimizes Insight Always-On Display, with more personalized Always-On Display settings available
• Optimizes Canvas Always-On Display, with more drawing tools and line colors available

Security & privacy

• Automatic pixelation feature for chat screenshots
• Adds Kid Space, providing screen time limit, ambient light reminders, and Eye-protecting display features

For more details on the announcement, visit the OnePlus 13 community page.

We have been tracking the new UI changes and features that will be arriving with Android 13 through our past 2 articles UI changes in Android 13 and New features in Android 13. Now, for the final one, let’s highlight what’s new in Android 13 for the developers.

Even if you are not a developer, it might be worth being aware of what new features you can expect in your favorite apps once the app developers begin to roll out their respective app updates integrating the new possibilities that will be available to them.

Apps can now turn ON the screen

Android has added a new permission “WAKE_LOCK”. Now if you want your app to be able to wakeup the screen during any event, you can ask for a user’s permission for the “WAKE_LOCK” permission to be activated for the app.

Camera improvements

New API for your camera, “Preview stabilization API” stabilizes the preview as well as all other non-RAW streams, in order to give a “what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG)” effect.

Control the brightness of the Flash

The Android 13 release includes new methods in the CameraManager class that allows apps to get and set the flash light brightness level. Only devices that report a value greater than 1 when apps use CameraCharacteristics.FLASH_INFO_STRENGTH_MAXIMUM_LEVEL will support this feature.

Enterprises can now block users from adding WiFi networks

If a device is fully managed by an enterprise, using their managed devices policy, app developers can now add the new UserManager.DISALLOW_ADD_WIFI_CONFIG restriction to hide the “add network” option on your device.

FPS management

Android’s Gaming mode, now supports setting the FPS that a game should run at.

Finetuning media file permissions

Till now, when an app needed access to any media file from your device, it would simply ask for media access permission or storage permission. Now with Android 13, apps can specifically ask for the media type, whether they want access to images, videos or audio files, or maybe all.

Body sensor permissions only while app is in use

Apps could access body permissions like temperature, heart beat sensor, accelerometer sensor etc. Now with Android 13, a user can limit these permissions to be allowed to be used only when an application is in use and not in the background. This could be a great way to optimize the battery usage.

Forwarding calls to connected devices

Say you have an Android Phone as well as an Android Tablet, but at the moment you have the tablet in your hand while your phone is docked for charging. You will be able to connect the devices in such a way that calls on your phone could be attended to from your tablet. This feature was being provided on Samsung devices for a while, which now Google plans on integrating it with Android OS itself for a wider consumption.

Overall in our 3 part series of articles, we have tried to cover majority of the major, noticeable changes that would be arriving to your devices once it gets the push from the manufacturer. If you wish to look at all the changelong in full detail, feel free to look into the Android 13 changelog and release notes.

In this series of posts regarding what’s new in Android 13, after our first article on the UI changes in Android 13, let’s now see what are the new features that we’ll be seeing. Afterall as much as the looks do matter, its the functionality that is the core strength of any operating system, may it be desktop or smartphone!

New Quick setting tiles

For the ease of toggling various settings, the quick setting tiles are very handy. Now Google has added many new tiles to the list…

Toggle color correction

Toggle one-handed mode

• QR code scanner – While this has been there for long, being offered by some manufacturers through their custom UIs, it was never part of Android OS itself (with Android native UI)
• Toggle color correction
• Toggle one-handed mode

You can now stream your own music to other devices with Bluetooth LE support

Ever wanted to stream music from your device to others? Now, if your device manufacturer added hardware support for Bluetooth LE, then Android 13 is now able to support music streaming feature.

change the screen resolution of your andriod device as well.

Schedule dark mode at bed time

You can now enable dark mode on your device as soon as your scheduled (or manual toggle) bed time gets triggered.

Set language per app

You will now be able to have your messaging apps in one language while having the mailing apps in another! With Android 13, you can now set a language per app, so you won’t need to keep changing your language every time you use a different app if you are amongst the ones who like some apps in English while others in a regional language.

Limit the apps a guest user can use

While creating/enabling a guest user, you can now select which specific apps the guest user will be able to use. The apps will still behave as a standalone install and will not share any data between users/profiles.

New features in split-screen mode

You can now simply drag an app to the split screen view to see two separate instances of the same app in two different views. Ofcourse, this feature needs to be compatible by the app as well.

On our next post (part three) we’ll delve into the changes that have come in for the Android app developers.

Now that Android 13 is being rolled out to multiple divices worldwide, starting from the Pixel range of smartphones, let’s start going through what new can you expect by the time it lands on your device. Note, here we’ll list most of those features which are not very manufacturer dependent, like only to Pixel devices or only to Samsung devices, rather would come most Android 13 devices.

As with every release of any operating system, including Android, new features come in every part of the operating system, including UI, functionality, optimization and development side of things.

Let’s start today with the UI changes, which obviously tend to be the first thing your eyes would notice as soon as you get the push notification, you upgrade Android on your device and restart…

Display resolution

Similar to how you could always choose the screen resolution that suites your screen size and your eyes to comfortably view something while still keeping the viewability index crisp and clear, you can now change the screen resolution of your andriod device as well.

Font and display settings

Font and display settings have been moved to “Display size and text” under Settings. Now you can not only preview the font and font size, but even the icons.

Also two new toggles have been added, Bold text and High contrast text which could also change the way the text looks on your screen.

Unified search bar

Although some device manufacturers brought this as part of Android 12 as well, this has now become default with Android 13.

The Search bar on Homepage of your device can now search not only Google search results, but also your apps, sms, whatsapp, settings and most everything on your device to show the results in one screen.

Rotation on lock screens

Mostly limited only to large screen mobiles, but now even the lock screen on your device will feature rotation, if auto rotation setting is enabled.

Redesigned media player

For those devices which will come with Android’s default media player, the complete layout has been redesigned to now be way more user friendly and intuitive.

Status bar user profile switcher

Android had launched user profiles (also known as multiple users) feature some while ago, but not many know about it and even fewer actually use it. But for those who see its benefits and use it, now have an easy way to know and switch their profiles.

Now a color can be associated with each user profile, along with a user image. To add to that, you can enable a setting to be able to add a user profile switcher icon to your notification tray to be easy to switch users.

Also, you can now choose the profile you want to log in to at the time of unlocking your lock screen itself.

We’ll continue to update this post as we keep seeing new features on the devices as Android 13 keeps getting rolled out through different manufacturers.

On our next post (part two) we’ll delve into the new functionalities that will be coming to your device with Android 13.

Google has finally started rolling out the latest Android 13 yearly update to its Pixel devices.

Google has over the years started following a release cycle of atleast one major release of Android every year, with the beta testing starting around the 2nd quarter of each year and the final release starting to roll out, starting with Google’s own Pixel devices, towards the 4th quarter of the year. This year however looks like they froze the final version a couple of months early for the release!

They have also announced that the updates should soon be rolling out to the other Android 13 supported devices as well including Samsung, Asus, HMD Global, iQOO, Motorola, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Sharp, Sony, Tecno, vivo, Xiaomi.

Google has announced Android 13 support for the following Pixel devices:

Pixel 4 and 4 XL
Pixel 4a and 4a (5G)
Pixel 5 and 5a
Pixel 6 and 6 Pro
Pixel 6a

If for any reason you haven’t yet begun receiving the OTA update on your supported Pixel device, or simply don’t want to wait till Google partners with your operator to push the OTA update, you can simply head to Google’s Pixel Android images page, download the image for your device and flash the latest version of Android onto your device manually, the instructions are given on the same page.