On August 16, Android 13 hit the market, a version full of significant improvements and new features, especially if you have a Google Pixel, but this version left me with a bitter taste personally. After four months since its launch, the feeling this release has left me with is that I’m facing a minor Android 12 update. Or rather, Android 13 should have been Android 12.
Android 12 It was the update that completely redesigned the operating system with Material You, and Android 13 pretty much just finished the path that Google started with Android 12, so the latest version of Android felt like the most boring of all, but it’s already Ordinary. Android has already reached a maturity point so high that each time it will be more difficult to surprise us, and the novelties begin to arrive drop by drop.
A more personal Android
Themes in apps
One of Google’s strengths in Android 13 It’s his personalizationas if this version had been created only for us, since with this version, and thanks to the technology of Material You, we can customize apps with colors, themes or languages. News that we have already seen with Android 12 but now with Android 13 extend to third-party apps
Now third-party apps can adapt their themes to our screen’s background color or the base color theme we’ve selected, but during these four months I did not find any third-party application It is important that you have used this new feature of Android 13.
Applications can also use the thematic icons so the apps we have on the home screen show the same monochrome style in the app icon. Here apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Spotify or Twitter have added support, in addition to most Google apps, but there are still very important apps to add support for these theme icons, such as Facebook, Firefox or Strava, to name a few. These two new features should have come with Android 12which is the version that released these adaptive themes.
Other important Android 13 news for customization are change app language. It’s a niche featurebecause very few users are those who need some of their apps to be in a language other than the system, but it is appreciated that Google has integrated the language configuration of the application into the system settings.
more permissions
Another of the main novelties of Android 13 is the new enable notifications. Now, when we install a new application, when we open it for the first time, we will have to authorize or not if we want this application to send us notifications. Basically, what Android 13 allows us is disable notifications in an easier and faster way
Android 13 also brings us more granular permissions for media files. If previously an application allowed us in a single authorization to access all our files and multimedia contents, in Android 13 is now several authorizationsone for photos and videos and others for audio and music. A small improvement that now allows us to prevent a music player from having access to our photos, but in the daily life of the user it is only a small improvement or a small change.
More security
Another of the star novelties of Android 13 is the one that I have not found yetand that’s his new photo and video picker which saves you from having to authorize an app to access your entire gallery. With this selector you will only share the photos and videos you choose with certain applications, but this novelty seems not to have been very well received by the developers at the moment, since they continue to ask for authorization to access the entire library. Maybe that will start to change in the future.
active applications
Android 13 loaded the permanent notifications, something that I really appreciate. Now in the quick settings bar, in a new section, you can see active apps running in the backgroundwith the possibility of closing them, something that in previous versions was not so easy or simple.
new clipboard
Finally, the new clipboard Android 13 is another of the novelties that I liked the most. When copying a text, you will see a preview of the copied text for a few seconds in a floating window, with which you can check if what you wanted has been copied with the option to edit it or share it with others. other devices. Also, to improve our privacy, after a short time it automatically cleans the clipboard, which I don’t really like, because sometimes when I needed to paste some text again, it had already gone.
Android 13 should have been Android 12
In these four months of use, the feeling that Android 13 has left me has been that, which is the version that should have been Android 12, since it has just launched Material You and its thematic icons to all applications, although very few developers use this feature.
And the rest of the novelties, finally, those that I liked the most and I use daily are the new enable notifications when I install a new application, the new way of seeing and manage active applications to see if an app I don’t want is left in the background and new clipboard to check if the text was copied correctly.
The rest of the novelties are also very important, especially those that cannot be seen, but comparing Android 13 to previous versions, it was the update that offered me the least novelties as a user, leaving me the feeling of being before the most boring update I have ever received because in the end there are three new ones that I use. Android 13 is a minor update of Android 12, and surely with Android 14 the same will happen. We will find less and less changes between versions until it touches a redesign of the interface.
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