The second developer preview of Android 13 is now available; giving Android lovers a sneak peek at what’s in store for the next version of the operating system. We’ll get right into it.
Notifications.
The first, and possibly most important, is the new notification permission. Currently, Android apps don’t require specific permission to send you notifications; but that’s likely to change in Android 13, and we’re seeing it in the developer preview 2 for the first time. This popup will ask you if you wish to get notifications from existing apps, and new apps will do the same when you install them. It’s a terrific strategy to stay away from the ever-noisier apps.
Improved Text Rendering.
In many languages that employ character sets other than the Latin alphabet, such as Japanese, sentences will wrap across lines more organically rather than character by character, as in Tamil and Burmese, where line-height difficulties might cause parts of characters to be chopped off. In languages where you type phonetically rather than using characters, such as Japanese and Chinese, Android 13 improves line spacing.
When searching, Android 13 improves auto-completion so you don’t have to wait to commit characters. This new API doesn’t appear to be used in any of the pre-loaded apps in the build, but once it’s rolled out, it should be a huge time saver.
Per-App Language.
In a related change, the per-app language setting that was announced back in developer preview one is now actually live with apps, letting you choose either one of your system languages or any from a very long list of supported languages. But a surprising number of popular apps will let you apply a specific language.
Bluetooth LE
Bluetooth LE audio is also included in this latest Android 13 developer preview 2. This is the most recent wireless audio standard that when paired with the correct headphones; can help you save battery life when listening to music, podcasts, or whatever else, in the same way; that normal Bluetooth LE helps wearable devices last longer. For audio playback, LE audio should provide a battery boost.
Color vector fonts.
The color v1 standard for color vector fonts will also be supported in Android 13. That means emojis, for example, should scale up to bigger proportions much more effectively without the blurring that occurs when a raster image is simply resized. It essentially means that Android 13 will have better-looking large emoji, which is something we can all agree on.
New Media.
The most noticeable update is the new media card design; which is larger and has album art or a YouTube thumbnail as a backdrop. Over the past several Android versions; Google has messed with the way this specific slice of the UI works quite a bit, but I think they’ve settled on something that looks pretty well, combining the material aesthetic with a great amount of usefulness in Android 13.
