The world moves fast, but the tech world moves faster. Android 12 has yet to arrive on most devices including recent flagships, but the rumor mill has already started turning for Android 13 and its features. The 13th iteration of Google’s mobile software is allegedly codenamed Tiramisu. Here’s what we know so far.
As usual, the folks over at XDA Developers were given an exclusive first look at the latest version. Based on their observations, here are some of the features added for Android 13:
Panlingual Mode
Photo courtesy of XDA Developers
Formerly, if multiple languages were available for a certain application, then the language chosen at the system level would be the one applied by default to all applications. This may have been frustrating for users who could use multiple languages, but couldn’t understand poorly-translated applications. This feature allows the language to be chosen on a per-app basis, so you could enjoy your Google in English but Facebook in Filipino for example.
Selected Notifications Only
The more apps you have on your phone, the more notifications you’re going to get from random updates, messages, and whatnot. While previous versions of Android gave you authority to mute these, Android 13 goes one step further: it completely removes permissions for applications to even send these notifications. That could be a breath of fresh air for people whose phones are running slow by now because of these things.
The Android Resource Economy (TARE)
To make this simple, it’s like an internal economic system within your phone that rewards apps for being more power-efficient. The form of currency is battery power, and the resulting work is tasks completed.
Lock Screen Design
Photo courtesy of XDA Developers
This may not matter to some of you whose phones have manufacturer skins or custom launchers installed, but the lock screen is getting a small but needed feature. The clock, which only settled at the top left of the screen if there were notifications received, can now be permanently set to sit at the desired position.
The Current State of Android
According to a survey by AppBrain, only around half (59.3%) of Android users are on a version released within the last 2 years (Android 10 and 11). Considering that many are on end-of-life devices, there may be a struggle to see widespread adoption of the full versions of Android 12 or even Android 13. We previously covered the hardware requirements for 12, which include 6GB of RAM and a 1080p display. Unfortunately, those specifications were flagship-level not too long ago and are still exclusive to the midrange and above as of now. There’s no saying if this hardware standard may increase drastically with Android 13, which will shut out even more users. We’ll have to see if an Android Go version will be released to fill this gap.
