Everything You Need to Know About Android 13 Developer Preview

A few months ago, the first developer preview of Android 13 got released. Built on core themes of privacy, security, developer productivity, tablets, and large screen support, this preview will make Android a better platform for developers and users.

In this blog, we have shared the Android 13 Developer Preview with more advanced features and updation for developers to try in their Android app development services. We will also discuss the 12L feature drop moving to the Android Open-Source Project (ASOP) helping the entire developer’s community to leverage over 250+ million large-screen Android devices.

12L feature drop is now available in ASOP

With the official release of the 12L feature drop to ASOP, it’s now rolling out to all the supported Pixel devices. 12L makes Android 12 perform better on tablets including the updates such as a new taskbar that allows users to drag and drop apps into spilt-screen mode. Also, the new large-screen layouts in the notification shade and lock screen have improved the compatibility modes for apps.

The starting days of 2022 witnessed 12L availability in planned updates on tablets and foldable from Samsung, Lenovo, and Microsoft. It is highly recommended to test your apps in split-screen mode with windows of varied sizes to ensure the orientations and new compatibility mode changes if required.

The best part is that the large screen features in 12 are foundational in Android 13. Therefore, Android developers in India can develop and test on Android 13 while also covering their bases for tablets running Android 12L. Large screens are predicted to be the future of Android, and experts are investing in more tools to build great experiences for tablets, Chromebooks, foldable, and more.

Now, let’s dive deeper into the Developer’s Preview 2 of Android 13.

Privacy and User Trust

Business enterprises and individuals demand an OS and applications that are trustworthy with their personal information and crucial resources on their devices. Both privacy and user trust are core to Android’s product principles. Therefore, in Android 13, developers have continued to focus on building a responsible and high-quality platform for its users by providing a safe environment on the device and more power to the users. Here are a few upgrades mentioned in Android 13:

Notification Permission: To help users focus on the notifications that are crucial to their business, Android 13 introduces new runtime permission for notifications from any app. The apps targeting Android 13 will now have to request the notification permission from the users before posting it. On the other hand, apps targeting Android 12 or lower need to handle the flow on the user’s behalf. The flow will continue to get fine-tuned. Therefore, to help users gain more context and control over their notifications, we encourage app developers to target Android 13 as soon as possible to request notification permission.

Developer down gradable permissions: Some apps may take longer than required for certain permissions which were granted by the users before to enable a specific feature. Also, to retain sensitive permission from an older Android version, Android 13 provide a new API to allow users to protect their app privacy by downgrading previously granted runtime permissions.

Safer exporting of context-registered receivers: in Android 12, developers had to declare the exportability of manifest-declared intent receivers. They achieved it by adding either the Receiver Exported or Receiver Not Exported flag while registering receivers for non-system sources. It helps ensure that receivers aren’t available for other applications to send broadcasts to unless desired. Although not required in Android 13, it is advisable to declare exportability as a step towards app security.

Developer’s productivity

In Android 12, developers have worked to give more tools to help the entire community deliver a polished experience and better performance to their users. Some of the amazing updates in this release include:

Improved Japanese text wrapping: Text Views can now get wrapped text by Bunsetsu (the smallest unit of words that sounds natural) or phrases instead of the character for more polished and readable Japanese applications. Developers can seek advantage of this wrapping by using android:lineBreakWordStyle=” phrase” with Text Views.

Enhanced line heights for non-Latin scripts: Android 13 improves the display of non-Latin scripts (for example Tamil, Burmese, Telugu, and Tibetan) by using a line-height that can get used for every language. The new line heights prevent clipping and improve the position of characters. Also, you can leverage these improvements by simply targeting Android 13. However, make sure to test your apps while using the new line spacing because the changes may affect the UI in non-Latin languages.

App Compatibility

With each platform release, Android developers in India are working for quick updates and smooth processes by prioritizing app compatibility with every new platform version. In Android 13, they made app-facing changes opt-in to give developers more time, and update their tools and processes to help get ready quickly.

Summary

With Developer Preview 2, the developer’s community continued to improve overall stability. Therefore, now is the time to try all the new features and changes to give your feedback and stay ahead of the competition. So, wait no more to unveil the features of Android 13 and implement them for feature-rich mobile applications.

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FAQs

Which phone will get Android 13?

Here is the checklist:

Google Pixel 4

Google Pixel 4 XL

Google Pixel 4a 5G

Google Pixel 5

Google Pixel 5a 5G

Google Pixel 6

Google Pixel 6 Pro

Which is the latest version of Android?

The latest version of Android OS Is 12, which was released in October 2021. Browse through our website to learn more.

When is Android 13 getting released?

Android 13 is already released as a very early developer preview and will reach platform stability by June 2022. The next version of the OS will mostly get announced at the all-virtual Google I/O 2022 dev summit on May 11, 2022.