Android 13 officially debuts at Google I / O: on the occasion of the inaugural conference of the event and a few hours after the launch of Beta 2, the Mountain View company offered the public a taste of its new operating system and of the features that we will soon see on board not only many smartphones, but also tablets, foldables and other increasingly connected devices.
Android 13 Tiramisu perfects the great legacy of Android 12, which is the design language Material Youthanks to additional customization options: in addition to small design touches, such as the playback bar in the Media Centerthe possibility of selecting languages ​​other than the system one for individual apps stands out.
RCS messaging
The first big news of Android 13 is RCS messaging standard (Rich Communication System), the result of collaboration with telephone operators and producers from all over the world.
The RCS standard is a big step forward in security, thanks to support for the end-to-end encryption, but also for the user experience. Thanks to this technology, owners of Android smartphones will now be able to share photos in high quality and use the Wi-Fi network to send messages.
On the other hand, a small thrust to Apple could not be missing, with the hope that every other mobile operating system receives the message and you start implementing the RCS standard.
Android 13, a multi-device OS
With more than three billion active devices, Android is the most popular mobile operating system in the world and extends not only to smartphones and tablets, but also to device Of every kind. Android 13 looks to this multi-device future ed extends more and more applications to different form factors and services.
Wear OS will arrive soon on smartwatches from brands like Fossil, Montblanc and Mobvoi, while the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 will get theGoogle Assistant optimized for Wear OS. More and more apps like Spotify, Adidas Running and LINE are coming to Wear OS, with SoundCloud and Deezer slated for later this year.
Android 13 continues the work done with Android 12L for optimization to the screens of tablet and foldable: New features for multitasking, including a handy toolbar and a redesigned notification section, make it even more intuitive user experience.
More than 20 are also on the way optimized applications for larger Android screens including TikTok, Zoom, Facebook and Canva. These updates, arriving in the next few weeks, take advantage of the space available with a multi-column view. Likewise will receive a redesign of the user interface of Google Play on this type of display.
The ever-increasing integration between Android and Chromecastextended to more and more devices for seamless entertainment experiences between smartphones, smart TVs and even cars, and the expansion of Phone Hub on Chromebookwhich will allow you to access your smartphone’s messaging apps directly from your laptop.
The support Fast Pair it will finally be extended to even more devices for an immediate and intuitive setup between earphones, smart TVs and other devices. A step forward on this front will come from the interoperability standard Matterwhich will debut this fall thanks to the cooperation between Google and several home automation brands.
Google Wallet
Another of the great new features of Android 13 is Google Walleta highly anticipated feature that can be stored in one place scanned documents such as vaccination passes, tickets and badges and integrate them with the rest of Google services.
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Google Wallet, arriving for Android and Wear OS in the coming weeks, integrates with the payment system Google Pay and expands its functionality in addition to economic transactions, with an eye to the security and privacy of personal data.
The company has also announced, for the moment exclusively for the United States but in the future also with the rest of the world, that it is working to digitize and store on Google Wallet the identity documentsstarting from driving licenses driving.
Emergency services
Google is also boosting its own Emergency Location Services (ELS), now available to more than a billion users worldwide, to allow for the location of devices such as smartphones and smartwatches in an emergency.
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Google will expand to 25 new countries, with priority on service risk areas Early Earthquake Warnings uses the accelerometer of smartphones to detect seismic waves with a few, precious seconds before the tremors.
The service is also expanding Emergency SOSsoon also compatible with Wear OS smartwatches.
When will Android 13 arrive?
Based on Road map released by the company and updated with each progress, the stable version of Android 13 Tiramisu should arrive starting from the month of August 2022.
In recent months, respectively in February and March 2022, the two were released Developer Preview, that is, builds distributed to developers to help optimize applications and services in time for the final release. Google has released Beta 2 for Pixel and other devices from selected manufacturers ahead of today’s event.
After the first Beta in April the Beta 2 of Android 13 Tiramisu represents the last step towards the stability of the platform.
