After a busy day on the Samsung front yesterday with the Galaxy S22, the Android world is now focusing back on Google with the launch of the Android 13 Developer Preview today.
Google VP Engineering, Dave Burke has unveiled the latest Android Dev Preview (DP1), showing off what’s to come for Android devices when the update goes live later this year – around August if the timeline of the Dev Preview on the Android Developers site goes to plan.
The Android 13 DP1 release will bring more privacy and security features, as well as visual updates including Material You’s dynamic app icons coming to all apps. There will also be more focus on large phones, with work from their Android 12L preview release for tablets, foldables, and Chromebook devices making its way in.
There’s some headliner features that Google is promoting, including a new photo picker and API to allow Android users to share both local and cloud-based photos securely, with the API able to access photos without accessing all media on the device.
Google is also bringing per-app language preferences so you can specify which language you want. A new nearby Wifi permission, which won’t need location info and a bunch of under-the-hood updates like more Project Mainline to update more of Android through Google Play – without those pesky carrier testing phases.
If you’re interested, the Android 13 Developer Preview release is available now for the Pixel 6 Pro, Pixel 6, Pixel 5a 5G, Pixel 5, Pixel 4a (5G), Pixel 4a, Pixel 4 XL, or Pixel 4 – but only if you’re willing to flash a system image. If you’re more inclined to wait, a Beta should be along with OTA updates around May.
For Developers, there’s a lot of information on Android 13 DP1 over on the Google Developers page.
