Android 13 review: It's the small things that matter

When I write one of these reviews, I'm reminded of the fact that the OS is constantly changing and that there are security vulnerabilities that need to be fixed. The ability to easily roll out updates to billions of phones is made possible by the underlying framework.

The biggest changes for the annual release of the operating system are reserved by the company. The last two years have seen the introduction of a new notification management system that prioritized conversations, as well as a radical redesign of the user interface.

It's not surprising that Google chose to play it safe this year, and while it doesn't have a lot of new features, it does deliver refinements in other areas. Changes to the notification shade and security fixes are included. When you'll be able to use the OS on your phone is one of the things we'll be looking at in this section.

Material You gets added refinement

The Material You design aesthetic is more colorful than Material Design. The interface has its detractors, but I like the changes made by the company. After using the Pixel 6 Pro for over two months, I can say that this is the direction the company needs to go.

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That's the case if you're using a phone that runs a clean interface without any customizability. There is a list these days that includes everything from nothing to nothing. Material You only allows you to change accent colors system-wide.

The biggest change to Material You with Android 13 is the dynamic color picker. The feature creates a list of colors that are based on the background of your phone, and it is an easy way to change the look of the interface.

It's great to know that you can choose between 16 colors instead of four. ColorOS 13 already has the ability to choose your own colors, but I would like to see it added to the line. Basic accent colors can be picked if you don't like any of the auto-generated colors.

Theme icons are compatible with third-party apps, but compatibility is not great. I couldn't get it to work with third-party apps, and the dueling design feels off-putting, since it is supposed to switch app icons to a color scheme that is in line with the system-wide accent colors.

Thankfully, there are no major changes to the notification pane in this release. The persistent media player's new design prominently highlights album art, as well as the large rectangular tiles that were introduced last year. You can cast music to another device on the feature set, which is the same as before.

You could switch to the full-width interface with a second pull-down gesture if you liked the narrow layout of the media player. The media player uses the full-width tile, which means less space for notifications, in the newer version of the operating system.

I would have liked the ability to choose a width for the media player. I don't know why the seek bar is moving when music is playing, but I guess it's a way to show the progress of a song.

The only other change on the notification pane is a task manager at the bottom. There are currently active apps in the foreground.

App notifications are now opt-in

You will have to give permission before app notifications can be sent, but I like this feature. I'm excited that this is now available on the other side of the world. I use a lot of services that think it's okay to send out notifications that aren't useful, and this is a good way to deal with that problem.

This is a better solution than the one available in the previous iteration of the operating system, where you had to wait for a notification, long-press it to go into an app's settings, and manually adjust it. If you upgrade to the newer version of the operating system, your notification preferences are carried over, and the feature goes into effect for any new app you install and not the ones that you already have.

Change language for individual apps

The ability to change language for an app is being rolled out by the search engine giant. You can just choose the language for the individual app.

If you're multilingual, this is a great addition to your phone. It's not possible to change the language for any app, it has to show up in the language selection window. There are a lot of services that don't use this feature.

The feature is limited in its ability to be used.

Changes are being made to how media can be granted in the mobile device operating system. The photo and video picker will prevent apps from accessing your entire media library. Instead, when you launch the system photo picker in an app, it will only be able to access the photos you select; like opt-in notifications, this feature has been in iOS for a long time.

The feature isn't limited to the newer version of the operating system, with it also being rolled out to devices on the older version of the software. There is only one issue at the moment, and that is that none of the apps that I use implement this feature, and I would like to see that change over the next few months.

If an app needs access to images and videos separately, it will need to ask permission separately, because they are now split into their own categories. It won't be able to access images or videos if you give it access to audio files.

Search on the Pixel Launcher is confusing again

The search experience between the home screen and the app drawer isn't getting a visual change. When you access the search bar on the home screen, you'll see suggested apps and your search queries, and you'll be able to find the app you're looking for. You need to scroll down to the bottom of the page to find a list of on-device listings.

It's easier to find on-device content when you perform the same query in the search bar at the top of the app drawer.

I don't like the change, it's bound to make users confused, and it's better if the search bar is limited to on-device content and the home screen is for web listings. You can return to this format by heading into the search preferences and turning off the search web setting.

All the other additions

There are a number of small changes that will be ready for the next version of the operating system. There's something new.

• There's now a native QR code scanner that can be set up as a tile in the notification shade. This way is faster than going through Google Lens, and it's great to see Google making the feature easily accessible.
• Split-screen multitasking continues to be limited on Pixel phones, with Google curbing the feature once again. When you pull up the split-screen mode within the Recents menu, you'll only be able to use an app that's already running — there's no option to choose all apps on your phone. Other brands do a much better job at this, with One UI and ColorOS offering a much more seamless path to split-screen multitasking.
• You'll find a new visual clipboard editor that makes it easier to edit the text that you've just copied. The contents of the clipboard clear after an hour. 
• Google made the gesture navigation bar that sits at the bottom of the screen a little bigger and wider, and there still isn't a way to hide it or switch to a transparent setting. Other interfaces like ColorOS and MIUI offer the option to hide the nav bar, but that is missing in the Pixel Launcher.
• Google is working on a predictive back gesture that shrinks the screen to the right, letting you get a preview of the screen you'll go back to. If you don't want to go back to that screen, you can just lift your finger to stay on the current window, and this is a very useful addition. While we're not getting the feature in Android 13, Google will make it standard in Android 14.

Android 13: When will you be able to use it?

The question is how soon you can get it on your device. You'll have to wait a little while for the build to make its way to the best phones because the stable version of the update is currently available for the Pixel phones.

The stable update is delivered by most manufacturers. The stable ColorOS 13 build is available for the Find X5 Pro, as well as the third OneUI 5 build.

There is a stable update for the MIUI 13 that will be released at the end of the year. You're going to be waiting for a long time if you use a device with aVanillaAndroid interface. Most brands are rolling out the stable update quicker than in the past.

Android 13 doesn't have much to offer, but that doesn't mean it's boring. A lot of features that were introduced last year, like opt-in notifications and privacy fixes, were rolled out last year. It doesn't have the flamboyance of the previous version, but it is more stable in daily use, making it all the more attractive.