In many ways, Android 12 offered a refreshing look to the OS in 2021 after so many uninspiring updates. But as great as it is—mostly from a design perspective—there's some obvious room for improvement. Here are five things we want to see in Android 13 in 2022.
1. Better Software Support for Foldables
We know that Google has been working on Android 12L to make the OS better for large-screen devices like tablets and foldable phones. And while this is good news, the application of this so-called "feature drop" is far from perfect in terms of overall functionality.
If you've been keeping an eye on Chinese OEMs, you know their plans to enter the foldable phone market in 2022—due to the success of the Galaxy Z Flip 3 and Fold 3. Given that, Android has a lot of work to do to be ready for the upcoming explosion of foldable phones.
2. Customizable Rear Panel Tap Gesture
We saw how the Pixel 6's camera feature Quick Tap to Snap lets you double-tap the back of the device to quickly open Snapchat and take a shot. This might remind you of how Samsung put a dedicated Bixby button on the Galaxy S8.
The idea here is great, but its implementation can be so much better if you could just customize what action the phone performs through the tap gesture feature. For instance, you could quickly open your favorite apps or enable/disable the features you use most often.
3. More Picture-in-Picture Controls
Picture-in-picture, or PiP, is a really useful feature if you often multitask on your device. If you subscribe to YouTube Premium, you know what we're talking about. But the video controls when you're on the PiP window feel a bit lacking.
Sure, you can play and pause, and skip to the next video, but anything more than that and you need to go full screen to perform that action. You can't change the playback speed, loop the video, rewind or fast-forward, or control the progress bar from the PiP window itself.
4. A Serious Gaming Mode
With Android 12, Google introduced a new gaming-centric feature called Game Dashboard that lets you record your screen, take screenshots, view the FPS of the game, and stream it live on YouTube. A neat upgrade. But just like many new features on Android 12, it can use some work.
To compare, the ROG Phone 5's Game Genie goes far beyond to let you block calls and notifications, lock the brightness level, change the refresh rate, view system temperature, and open a different app simultaneously in a floating window. We wouldn't mind Android 13 stealing some of those features.
5. Improved Scrolling Screenshots
Android users have been asking for scrolling screenshots for quite some time, and Android 12 finally delivered it. Except, it didn't. As a Google Product Expert puts it, the feature is "limited to a few apps" like your device settings or the app drawer which makes it pretty much useless.
Ideally, you should be able to take scrolling screenshots for web pages and apps that require scrolling to consume content, like social media platforms. Even better if the user can control how much of the screen to capture. Android 12 doesn't have any of those capabilities.
Android 13 Could Be Amazing
While we're not expecting Android 13 to be as big an update as its predecessor, there are definitely still things that can be done to improve the experience of the OS. And as we discussed, a lot of them involve simply refining the newly-introduced features on Android 12 and making them more useful.