A Tiramisu Surprise: Android 13 Beta 4 Arrives Ahead of Expectations

Google surprised us all with a new release ahead of predictions. But what's in it? And what does it mean for you? Let's take a quick look.

Joseph Hopkins and Nikhil Kejriwal

UPDATED: June 06, 2023-POSTED: July 15, 2022

The final Tiramisu beta arrived on Wednesday. This occurred far ahead of expectations— many developers expected beta 4 to arrive during the third quarter of 2022. This is in part because Google released Android 11 back in September 2020 and Android 12 in October 2021.

So, what’s there to say about this brand-new 79 MB final beta and how does it differ from its predecessor? Let’s take a quick look!

What do we have here?

Exterior to its early arrival date, this beta is probably most notable for its stability. Unlike some previous Android betas, there are very few noticeable bugs in this beta. We encountered very few issues during our brief testing.

And yet while we’ve seen it reported here and there that there have been no additions to this update, that isn’t exactly true. In fact, beta 4 arrived with several small changes. Let’s take a look:

• GPU Battery percentage: New to this beta, you can now view the device’s GPU battery usage percentage under the operating system’s “battery usage” category.
• Wireless emergency alert changes: Beta 4 shows some significant changes compared to beta 3 here. The options have in general been reduced. For example, there’s no longer an option to turn of vibrations here.
• Widget resizing returns: While absent in beta 3, widget resizing is back from beta 2. Teams working on widget options may find the options here of particular interest.
• Optimization, bug fixes, and (a little) more: One aspect that users will immediately notice is an improvement in transition animations. This looks excellent. Additionally, we’ve detected optimization improvements and we encountered far fewer bugs than the last beta. Never a bad sign!

The verdict

In summary, we aren’t seeing a lot of big changes this time around. Unless Google has a few surprises in store for us, this beta appears to be just about ready for a full release. Of course, when that full release arrives, you can expect full support from us here at Sofy.

We also recommend checking out our coverage of the latest features Apple has announced for the company’s upcoming iOS 16 here. Comparing the two provides a lot of insight on where the two are at—and where they’re going next.