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Daily Authority: šŸŽ‚ Android 13 and Tiramisu

Android 13 emerges for a first developer preview, SpaceX event, and all the tech news you need to know today!
By
ā€¢
February 11, 2022
Android 13 on Pixel 5 with Codename Tiramisu
C. Scott Brown / Android Authority

šŸš€ Good morning! Android 13ā€™s codename is delicious, and Elon Musk has crazy ambitions for space and Mars, of course. On with the day!

Android 13

Android 13 Logo Hero
C. Scott Brown / Android Authority

Lucky Android 13 is here! Android dessert officially codename Tiramisu was announced as ready to download as a developer preview at 1PM ET yesterday. Developers and enthusiasts with a spare Pixel are now able to load the early test version up from that moment to get a look at whatā€™s to come from Android.

  • Loading it up on your personal daily driver, Iā€™ve found, is an exercise in futility: expect crashes, bugs, weird disconnections, and lots of bug fixes rolled out along with new versions.
  • I absolutely wonā€™t put it on my Pixel 4a 5G until the first true beta arrives, which based on the Android timeline, is sometime in the back half of March, and even then, youā€™ll need to accept a less than perfectly stable experience ā€” again, thatā€™s the whole point of a beta.
  • But, um, if you want, hereā€™s how to install it.

Whatā€™s new:

  • A lot of what Google is prepping isnā€™t really out of the kitchen yet, but developers can already start to prepare.
  • Googleā€™s advancements in privacy continue: thereā€™s a new way to give apps just a few photos or files rather than access to everything on your device as is the default now. Itā€™s being called Photo Picker.
  • But itā€™ not just coming to Android 13: Google is also hard at work making bigger updates to older versions of Android via Google Play system updates, meaning your old-but-still-gold OnePlus 5T will get improvements, even if it doesnā€™t get new Android versions. So, Photo Picker will roll out to older devices, too.
  • Other stuff: a new Wi-Fi permission so apps can get Wi-Fi without locations, better Material You theming so that even app icons change colors with your wallpaper, per-app languages to set one language for the system but one language for specific apps, and more.
  • Also uncovered: support for two homescreen layouts meaning support for one screen on foldables and a different layout for the inside of a foldable, updates to Now Playing notification, new Quick Settings tiles, and more.
  • More and more will be added as we get closer to release and this post is tracking everything we know about Android 13, which will grow and grow.
  • But the important thing to know is youā€™re not missing out, yet. Android 13 also doesnā€™t look like itā€™s going for a major design change but more will add further refinements plus foldable considerations, and keep things ticking along nicely.
  • (I read a Spanish to English translation that said ā€œAndroid will get fatter as its final release in September approachesā€ which is also a good summary!)

Roundup

šŸ“ø Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra camera test: Check out these quick look photo samples (Android Authority).

šŸ© Hereā€™s Sonyā€™s strange doughnut-shaped earbuds called the LinkBuds WF-900 (Android Authority).

šŸ“² Dead or alive? Hereā€™s whatā€™s happening with BlackBerry phones (Android Authority).

šŸŽ Apple is still working on stopping AirTags being so useful for tracking people: its new plan will be more safeguards, more warnings (Gizmodo).

šŸ This is nuts: Apple admits it changes every ex-employeeā€™s role to the work ā€œassociate,ā€ which means nothing, strips people of their titles, leads to mismatching titles that prevent people getting a new job, and creates a kind of ā€œfalse informationā€ zone. Understandably, stories like this make people mad. I see an argument that people would prefer Apple saying it canā€™t confirm any details, rather than reporting incorrect information? (WashPo).

šŸ¤” Xiaomi founder Lei Jun ā€œvows to challenge Appleā€ with sharpened focus on the global high-end smartphone market (SCMP).

šŸ¤– ā€œA robot bought my seven-year-old car for more than I paid brand-new.ā€ Wow. Seven years old! Car prices are nuts, but the detail here is exceptional. Great read. (The Verge).

šŸ‘‰ AMDā€™s $35 billion purchase of semiconductor company Xilinx, which makes FPGAs and ASICs, not CPUs and GPUS, has actually gone through (The Verge).

šŸ”‹ US Army turns to microgrids, EVs to hit net zero by 2050. EV tanks? (Ars Technica).

šŸš€ SpaceX Starship event recap: Elon Musk talks Mars missions, ambitious goals as always, including a future ā€œwhere Starships could be built every three days,ā€ and more in megarocket update (CNET).

ā˜„ Another video of the falling SpaceX Starlink satellites, this one crossed Spain apparently (Twitter).

šŸ„— ā€œIs the stomach basically a constant ā€˜vat of acidā€™ that the food we eat just plops into and starts breaking down or do the stomach walls simply secrete the acids rapidly when needed?ā€ (r/askscience).

Friday Fun

Iā€™m a sucker for a decoding job and thereā€™s a fun write-up of the decoding of a 160-year-old letter written by Charles Dickens, which has been solved thanks to some classic internet crowd-sourced efforts.

dickens
  • The nature of things is that Dickens would write in a fairly cryptic looking shorthand. (He wasnā€™t trying to be cryptic, just efficient!)
  • Anyway, if you take one look at the sample itā€™s unreadable, hence the efforts required to help unearth more Dickens.
  • The crowd-sourced transcription is now 70% complete (meaning you can still get involved if you really, really want), and an IT guy in California won the competition (worth Ā£300 GBP, not bad) which was started to drive efforts.
  • But perhaps less exciting than a new short story, it reveals a dispute between Dickens and The Times of London regarding some ongoing dealings between Dickens, his publisher that he was at war with, and The Times.
  • Dickens won, by the way.

Decode this: Vjrrtd!

Tristan Rayner, Senior Editor.

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