In this week’s newsletter:

  • Android 12 Beta program ends
  • Android 13 Beta 3 is out
  • The Jetpack library for UWB hits alpha 
  • The end of SafetyNet as we know it
  • …and more 

Android in the news

🚗 Details for Android Automotive 12L are now available, highlighting broad changes to the system UI, Bluetooth and connectivity features, audio, security, telemetry, stability, and more. The most significant change appears to be a new Quick Controls option for OEMs to customize with specific settings (like Bluetooth). 9to5Google has the full details. 

🧙‍♂️ Magisk hit version 25.0, which includes dramatic rewrites to how the software initializes in the boot process and a more accurate and secure root permission management system. The full details are pretty technical, but you can dig in here. Otherwise, Android Police has a good overview of the changes. 

📱 The Android 12 Beta program ended this week with the stable launch of QPR3. Phones currently enrolled in the Android 12 Beta will be automatically unenrolled “over the coming weeks,” which will put them on the stable channel. Alternatively, you can enroll them in the Android 13 beta if you’d like. 

🛡️ The June 2022 Android Security Bulletin is out a list of security vulnerabilities fixed in the most recent patch level. 

📲 Android 13 Beta 3 landed this week, and with it comes Platform Stability. All app-facing system behaviors and SDK and NDK APIs are final, ahead of the stable release sometime later this year. Full details are available on the Android Developers Blog and Mishaal has a thread on Twitter with everything new.

News for developers

  • The Jetpack library for UWB announced at I/O is now available. This will allow apps to interact with UWB-enabled devices. 
  • Developer details for Android 13 Beta 3 are available on the Android Developers Blog. This covers app compatibility testing, behavior changes, and specifics for large screen devices. 
  • Google is killing off the SafetyNet Attestation API and replacing it with the new Play Integrity API. SafetyNet Attestation will be deprecated by 2024, so developers have plenty of time to make the switch. XDA Developers has all the details. For more information on SafetyNet and Play Integrity APIs, give a listen to this episode of the Android Bytes podcast.

Android Inside: RealWear

Technology has dramatically changed the way we work across all industries. Constant communication, access to pretty much all the data you could ever need at your fingertips, and real-time data transmission for crucial tasks are the all par for the course at this point, and RealWear is taking all of these concepts to the next level with its rugged AR headsets for industrial environments. 

You can liken RealWear’s products to Google Glass but with a more focused use. With a RealWear headset, frontline workers can record and stream videos, make video calls, pull up files, and a lot more with simple voice commands. Since the headsets are AR, workers can keep their hands free and mind focused on what they’re doing. The headsets are based on AOSP Android 10 and offer access to hundreds of Android apps like Zoom and TeamViewer. To learn more, head here. 

Android Dessert Bites: mDNS .local resolution finally works on Android

Thanks to Project Mainline, core Android components can be updated outside of full OS updates. One such Mainline update quietly brought a long-requested feature: support for mDNS .local resolution. In this week’s edition, I dive into this basic networking feature and question why it took so long to get it on Android.

What we’re reading

The reddit tech blog (r/RedditEng) has a detailed look at IPv6 on Android and the issues the engineering team had to wade through when implementing it. It’s a wild ride. 

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