The “usual” Mishaal Rahman thoroughly analyzed the source code of Android 13 QPR1 that Google delivered last week to the Pixels to find out if there was more to it than the visible. And the search gave positive results: the firmware contains several other hidden innovations, i.e. drowned in the code to be activated at the right time, probably not only on the Pixels. The QPR1 of Android 13 is in fact the first quarterly update of the most recent version of Android, and for technology three months are not a few.
Google seems to have returned to desktop mode , ready to receive perhaps the most important news since it was introduced with Android 10 without believing too much in the benefits for the user. The code added in Android 13 QPR1 suggests a step change in the direction of usability for the end user. At the moment, however, giving a simple explanation of what the changes might actually be is complicated, and Rahman himself expects to see something else, something clearer, on Android 13 QPR2.
Android 12L introduced a new taskbar for products with large screens, i.e. those with more than 600 dpi. However, the value can be changed at will from the developer options, so in fact anyone could make it appear by “playing” with the resolution. Google on Android 13’s QPR1 has set up a flag that allows you to replace the navigation bar with the taskbar in a simpler way, without changing anything.
The relatively short debut of the Pixel Tablet is the open secret, and Google with the QPR1 paves the way for it, leaving us some unpublished information. In fact, the Android screensaver is ready to be renewed with the introduction of complications and widgets: there are Smartspace (code name of At a Glance, the multifaceted widget of the Pixels), Media entry (the multimedia controller) and Home controls (for manage home smart devices). This way the Pixel Tablet screensaver could turn it into a Nest Hub.
There’s a new button that can appear on the taskbar in Android 13 QPR1 Beta 3 on Pixel devices. When you tap the pencil icon, Google Keep’s drawing mode is opened (Google’s experimenting with launching it as a bubble and floating window).
There are traces of a possible customization of the clock on the lock screen, a long-awaited novelty that never materialised, of the possibility that one can choose to record only a specific portion of the screen and not all of it as now, the quick start of writing to Google Keep from the taskbar, an extended picture in picture that allows you to tile two windows, an “advanced VPN” on which, at the moment, there are no details, and (many) other minor innovations.
