Don’t get your hopes up for an incremental Android 13 release
Android has continuously improved, with every new version introducing features to enhance the user experience. But being a mobile-first OS, it has shown little love to large screen devices like tablets (and more recently, foldables) with interfaces that stretch across the display without any care for optimization. Google eventually took a different route last year withAndroid 12L, which is basically Android 12 for large screens. But withAndroid 13already in beta, there’s been some confusion as to whether this is a one-time spin-off or if there’ll be an Android 13L. In case you were still wondering, the former is as good as officially confirmed.
Android 12L has had the makings of a one-off thing, and we now have more concrete evidence of that, courtesy of a recent tweet from Mishaal Rahman. Despite the tablet-focused operating system being a tiny upgrade to Android 12, it was still a big enough release to warrant API level 32, one level above A12’s 31. Following that trend, Android 13 emerged with API level 33, meaning that a potential successor or point release will get number 34. But that designation has been attributed to Android 14 multiple times by Google in AOSP and in talks during Google I/O, laying to rest any expectations of an Android 13L.
This is hardly a surprise, though. In ourAndroid 12L versus Android 13article, we explained that although Android 12L was aimed at tablets, Android 13 will incorporate all of its progress in the segment to deliver a more rounded OS experience. In fact, the only difference between the two comes to the split-screen button in PiP windows being enabled/disabled by default — and that can be fixed in the next Android 13 build.
It all makes sense if you think of Android 12L as a testing ground for all the big screen improvements. And with the trials conducted successfully, Google can port those changes to its next general release. Of course, it goes without saying that Android 12L is still very much available for OEMs to install on their devices, but unless it’s a tablet, you won’t see much of a difference from Android 12. If anything, the release to look forward to is Android 13.
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