Android 13 review: plans for the future, but nothing to offer today

The Android update treadmill continues with the release of Android 13. This is one of the smallest Android releases in recent times, with little to no user-facing features. Keep in mind, however, that this update follows last year’s Android 12 release. It is also the second release of the Android OS this year, following the tablet-focused Android 12L update that was released in March.

We’d have a little more stuff to work with if Android 12L were part of this release, but as it stands, we’re left with the Android 13 feature set. It includes a lot of core features for Android tablets and smart displays. but for phones, there isn’t much here.

However, there is a lot to talk about, so let’s dive in.

Notification panel

One of the nicest changes in Android 13 is the addition of runtime notification permission. You could have blocked apps from showing notifications for years, but now apps must explicitly ask for permission to beep, and an allow/deny popup will appear on startup. As someone who rarely wants to be bothered by my phone, I have found my approval level to be very low. It feels like 95 percent of apps ask for notification permissions, and I approve maybe 10 percent of them. It is very nice to block annoying notifications in advance.

As far as I can tell, this permission popup only appears if you’re starting from a fresh install. For updaters, everything already has notification permissions and the OS won’t ask.

Google actually made a task manager

Another new notification feature is Google’s “Foreground Services (FGS) Task Manager”, which is a user-centric task manager found at the bottom of the Quick Settings panel. Google and Apple are going out of their way to prevent consumers from having the same control over smartphones as they do over PCs, but Google has finally given users a list of running apps they can kill. It’s not a list of all applications, like in a traditional task manager; it’s just a list of foreground services. Foreground services are Android apps that are currently doing active work, even if they don’t display an interface to the user – things like a music player, activity tracking, automation, or a sync service.

Task Manager sits at the bottom of the Quick Settings panel in the form of a long, circular bar that says “X apps are active.”By clicking on it, you will see a list of running applications with a “stop”button next to each. It’s not Android’s first task manager – over the years there have been various launcher interfaces available in Developer Options – but it’s the first task manager aimed at consumers.

In Android 8.0, Google has drastically reduced background processing by stating that if apps don’t want to be automatically closed by the system, they need to be shown to the user when they’re running. In previous versions of Android, the app generated a notification that it was running. While it’s helpful to know which apps are running, putting that information in the notification bar and displaying an attractive icon in the status bar was annoying. The notification bar should be for new and temporary items, not a 24/7 reminder that “Tasker is running”.

In Android 13, the task manager takes over notification responsibilities and now the persistent notification is no longer required. The notification will still pop up, but can now be dismissed, unlike previous versions of Android. Swipe the notification, and the only sign that an item is running is the neatly folded number at the bottom of the Quick Settings panel. This is a much more convenient way to handle notifications about running apps.