Pixel users are in for a treat today as Google confirms the rollout of Android 13 to devices.
Following the release of the final beta last month, Google has gone and flipped the release switch for Android 13 for its own 1st party Pixel devices starting with the Pixel 4 and newer.
While Android 12 and 12L seemed to have come and gone over the past year with little fanfare, Android 13 appears to be a much more solid update that is bringing more features and less stability patches than its predecessor.
In Android 13, users will be greeted with changes to Material UI that bring more color matching pallets to overall theme of phones as well as an improved media player that’s larger and displays an active playback bar in the notification shade.
The color customizations for Android 13 drill deeper into app-by-app usage that include changing colors, themes and languages.
Google is also touting more security with Android 13 that gives users the ability to delegate which content apps have access to beyond entire media folders. Users can now grant or prevent access to specific photos or videos that apps can leverage.
Android 13 is also attempting to muzzle app notification spam by prompting permissions for notification access.
Perhaps, some of the biggest changes coming to Android 13 have to do with its data sharing ecosystem accessibility that start with chat communications seamlessly spanning across mobile devices and Chromebook, ala iPhones and MacBook integration. While it’s been a part of Android messages on the web, the new functionality can be achieved with or without a browser instance started on Chromebooks.
In a similar fashion, users can copy content such as URLs, text or pictures from their phone and paste them onto their tablet or Chromebook, unfortunately, this a TBD feature and not part of the initial Android 13 rollout at the moment.
Android 13 is also adopting Low Energy (LE) Bluetooth standards that should improve the quality of audio as well as broadcast media to multiple channels at once.
Android 12L was supposed to usher in the support for larger screens and foldables but Android 13 builds upon that with dual app content share, new gestures for split-screen functionality.
There are a handful of other smaller additions that can be read over at the official Google blog here.
