KUALA LUMPUR, April 28 – In February, Google unveiled the first sneak peek at Android 13 when it announced the Android 13 developer preview. only for those who have a compatible Google Pixel smartphone. We’ve covered some major changes that Android 13 will bring to the original developer preview article, but the new public beta for Android 13 will be accompanied by its own set of changes and quality-of-life updates. Officially called Android 13 Beta 1, the first new change comes in the form of a more transparent permissions system for accessing media files. Instead of simply giving an application access to all your media files, an application should tell you exactly what it is asking for, whether it is images, video or audio. Once you grant access to an application, it can only read file types that correspond to the requested media type. If an application required more than one type of media, it will not bombard you with multiple authorization requests. Instead, the permission request prompt will simply display all the media for which it is requesting access. In addition, Android 13 Beta 1 will have better bug reporting in Keystore and KeyMint, as key-generating applications will now provide more detailed and accurate error indicators. Then there’s the new Audio Path API, which will help multimedia applications determine how their audio will be routed. This will allow application developers in particular to deduce the best audio format to be used specifically for their audio tracks. Another key feature with Android 13 Beta 1 is that developers will want to start testing their app compatibility soon. With this new step in the development of Android 13, it means that there will be more users in Android 13 and so more users will test your application and point out any bugs, issues or incompatibilities they find. It is especially important that the applications become compatible with Android 13 soon, as Google plans to release it sometime in the second half of the year. Of course, as mentioned earlier, Android 13 Beta 1 is only open to some Google Pixel phones, especially the Pixel 4 and later. Since Google Pixel smartphones have never officially arrived in Malaysia, it is safe to say that most Malaysians will not be able to try Android 13 Beta 1. That said, you can still find out more about Android 13 beta here. and if you’re particularly curious about Google’s next mobile operating system, they’ll be sharing more about it until Google I / O is released in May. – SoyaCincau