Previously, I had made an overview on the Android 10 software, when it was recently released at the time being, and many minor, and a few major things were added to most Android Phones universally. Lately Android as a whole has started to step up there game with there latest OS updates to be on par, if not better than their Apple competitors in terms of camera usage, security measures, and general convenience. I want to go over a short overview of the new items and features added to the software.
I have a Samsung Galaxy S7, so I am not eligible yet for Android 13 until the time comes for more Android devices in the future, so I’m gonna explain what I think may be the most useful.
The OS was released a week ago as of now, although only for support for the recent Pixel devices for now. The design at first glance has a lot of improvements although it still keeps that typical look of an Android Device. As a whole the system was a minor upgrade, but still provides the user to have a lot of flexibility of source code with coding languages like Kotlin, and XML as per any other android device, which is what I like about it.
There are a few Privacy and Security aspects that were added to the system including tighter restrictions regarding apps to allow permissions for Files, the camera, and other media. There are now more specific permissions for each app, instead of just an “Allow” this app to use this part of the device.
Some Security Measures
A similar concept regarding nearby devices with specific WI-FI API’s will allow you to connect to nearby devices over WI-FI access points instead of just directly using your location with ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION for WI-FI related cirumstances, under the suspicion of an app tracking your location. The nearby devices concept tightens this issue by granting new permissions to the user about features that may require WI-FI. The new code used for the update is NEARBY_DEVICES
Further more on user security, a minor feature but one I and many others prefer are the hide sensitive information feature on the Clipboard. You can flag information copied to the clipboard as sensitive by adding a Boolean, E.g:ClipDescription.EXTRA_IS_SENSITIVE
Updating, And Cache Prefetching
For other command based features Android 13 has improved there app prefetching features, almost like a more improved cache to keep Apps up to date in the background with the version closest to the next launch of the app in question. This is with the JobInfo.Builder.setPrefetch()command line.
Designs, And Focus Mode improvements
Similar to recent IOS updates, the Android 13 update provides the user with a chromatic theme, which also changes the colors of the app logo to match with the rest of the background. This isn’t everyone’s fit so this is optional. There are greyscale, bronze, even gold themed backgrounds that can match the apps as well. It depends how the user designs it.
In previous Android 10 updates as well, we have noticed screen time features such as Focus Mode, which in shorter terms is a screen time management tool. Android 13 makes a slight mention of a focus mode by creating a list of apps that would be deemed the most distracting based on the amount of hours being put into them.
Add Comment