Google has started to support a third-party billing system for Google Play Store purchases in India as the Android-maker begins complying with the local regulatory directions in the key overseas market. From a report: Google said in a support page Thursday that it is offering "all developers" serving users in India the option to use an alternative billing system and outlined the steps developers need to follow to avail the option. The change is in "response to recent regulatory developments" in the South Asian market, the company said.

If a user pays through an alternative billing system, Google's Play service fee will be reduced by 4%, the company said. Google was slapped with a $161 million fine by the Competition Commission of India last year and was ordered to make a series of stringent changes to its business practices in the country. While Google continues to challenge the decision, it said last month that it will comply with the order.

Google has released optimization features designed to improve battery life and memory usage on machines running the latest version of its Chrome desktop web browser. From a report: Chrome's new Energy Saver and Memory Saver modes were first announced in December last year alongside the release of Chrome 108, and now as noted by Android Police, the two optimization utilities are starting to roll out globally onto Chrome 110 desktops for Mac, Windows, and Chromebooks.

Memory Saver mode essentially snoozes Chrome tabs that aren't currently in use to free up RAM for more intensive tasks and create a smoother browsing experience. Don't worry if you're a tab hoarder though, as these inactive tabs are still visible and can be reloaded at any time to pick up where you left off. Your most used websites can also be marked as exempt from Memory Saver to ensure they're always running at the maximum possible performance.

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: Meta announced a new $11.99-a-month subscription service on Sunday (or $14.99-a-month for Android and iOS). For your money you mainly get the privilege of authenticating your own account with a government ID, so that it can then display the official "verified" badge. (Accounts must have a prior posting history, with account holders verified to be at least 18 years old.)

Meta promises they won't change already-verified Facebook and Instagram accounts — at least, not "as we test and learn." But they immediately follow that sentence by warning that in the longer-term they're "evolving the meaning" of verification, aiming to making everyone want to subscribe. Meta calls this "expanding access."

Paying subscribers will also get:

— Protection from account impersonation (at a higher level that's apparently not made available to non-paying members), including "proactive account monitoring".

— "Help when you need it with access to a real person for common account issues."

— Exclusive "stickers" for Facebook and Instagram Stories and Facebook Reels, plus 100 free Facebook "stars" each month "so you can show your support for other creators."


But most importantly, Meta is also promising to grant "increased visibility and reach" to paying members, promising "prominence" in parts of the service (including search, recommendations, and in comments). Although a footnote warns this may vary — depending on what you're trying to post about — and all content "will be treated according to our existing guidelines for recommendations on Instagram or Facebook and our Content Guidelines."

George Takei once calculated roughly 80% of your friends never see the things you post on Facebook. But now Facebook is deliberately evolving into a two-tiered system where some will always be relegated to less-likely-to-be-seen status, always outshined by wealthier friends with $144 a year to spend on upgrading their Facebook accounts.

The internet already has a two-tiered system for news, where the best news articles are only available to those with the funds to climb over multiple paywalls. But now even the lower tier of discourse — all that non-journalistic content floating around Facebook — will transform from a pool of burbling anger and misinformation into something worse. It's like Facebook's algorithm went from promoting just the most divisive content to promoting content from whoever most desires to foist their ideas onto other people. This may not end well.

Is it just me, or does this seem like a desperate grab for money?

— They're monetizing Meta's inability to stop account impersonators.

— Their announcement admits that "access to account support" remains a top request of their creators. Yet paying members are apparently more likely to get it than non-paying members. Maybe that can be their new marketing slogan. "Help when you need it — sold separately."

— This is happening. It becomes available for purchase this week on Instagram or Facebook in Australia and New Zealand.

AirTag competitor Tile today announced a new Anti-Theft Mode for Tile tracking devices, which is designed to make Tile accessories undetectable by the anti-stalking Scan and Secure feature. MacRumors reports: Scan and Secure is a security measure that Tile implemented in order to allow iPhone and Android users to scan for and detect nearby Tile devices to keep them from being used for stalking purposes. Unfortunately, Scan and Secure undermines the anti-theft capabilities of the Tile because a stolen device's Tile can be located and removed, something also possible with similar security features added for AirTags. Tile's Anti-Theft Mode disables Scan and Secure so a Tile tracking device will not be able to be located by a person who does not own the tracker. To prevent stalking with Anti-Theft Mode, Tile says that customers must register using multi-factor identification and agree to stringent usage terms, which include a $1 million fine if the device ends up being used to track a person without their consent.

The Anti-Theft Mode option is meant to make it easier to locate stolen items by preventing thieves from knowing an item is being tracked. Tile points out that in addition to Anti-Theft Mode, its trackers do not notify nearby smartphone users when an unknown Bluetooth tracker is traveling with them, making them more useful for tracking stolen items than AirTags. Apple has added alerts for nearby AirTags to prevent AirTags from being used for tracking people. Enabling Anti-Theft mode will require users to link a government-issued ID card to their Tile account, submitting to an "advanced ID verification process" that uses a biometric scan to detect fake IDs. [...] Anti-Theft Mode is rolling out to Tile users starting today, and will be available to all users in the coming weeks.

Google has begun letting Android developers kick the tyres of its claimed reboot of ad-targeting -- announcing the launch of the first Beta for its "Privacy Sandbox," an adtech stack proposal which aims to iterate how ad tracking, targeting and reporting is done so it appears less creepy for individual users while maintaining an interest-based, behavioral targeting capability on web users' eyeballs. From a report: A "small percentage" of eligible Android 13 devices will be enrolled in the trial of the beta from today as the adtech giant starts a gradual (but it says global) rollout of the beta -- which will "expand over time." (It's published developer guidance on participating in the beta here.) Ad partners for the trial include TechCrunch's parent Yahoo, mobile games maker Rovio, mobility firm Wolt, cross-platform games engine Unity and mobile marketing platforms AppsFlyer, InMobi Exchange and Adjust. "If your device is selected for the Beta, you'll receive an Android notification letting you know," Google adds in a blog post -- implying Android users will be opted in to the experimental, interest-based ad targeting (and will have to actively opt out if they don't wish their eyeballs to be guinea pigs).

Android 14 is here -- or the first preview is, at least. From a report: Google is kicking off the months-long developer preview process for Android's latest version, which will get a final release in the second half of the year. Even with multiple previews, Google likes to keep the final set of Android features under wraps at least until its I/O conference in May, so we can't look at the features here to determine the scope of Android 14. These are just some of the features Google wants developers to have a head start on. The biggest news is that Android 14 will block the installation of old Android apps. As Android changes over the years, new APIs and increased security, privacy, or background processing restrictions could break old apps, but Android's backward-compatibility system keeps these old apps running. Apps can declare the newest version of Android they support via a "Target SDK" flag.

To prevent old apps from breaking, new features and app restrictions in, say, Android 12 only apply to apps that target Android 12 or above. Older apps will continue to run with the older set of restrictions they're used to. (A different setting, called "Minimum SDK," determines if a new app can run on an old Android OS.) The system works great for honest developers, but if you're building a piece of malware, it's an easy decision to target a very old version of Android. While you'll get access to fewer features, you'll also be subject to fewer security and privacy restrictions. For the first time, Android 14 will close this malware loophole by simply refusing to install old apps. The cutoff point is generous enough that it shouldn't cause anyone problems; any app targeting the 8-year-old Android 6.0 or below will be blocked. Google says it picked Android 6 because it's the version that introduced runtime permissions, the allow/deny boxes that pop up asking for things like camera access. In addition, "some malware apps use a targetSdkVersion of [Android 5.1] to avoid being subjected to the runtime permission model introduced in 2015 by Android 6.0," Google said.

Artem S. Tashkinov writes: Don't buy an Android phone in China, boffins have warned, as they come crammed with preinstalled apps transmitting privacy-sensitive data to third-party domains without consent or notice. The research, conducted by Haoyu Liu (University of Edinburgh), Douglas Leith (Trinity College Dublin), and Paul Patras (University of Edinburgh), suggests that private information leakage poses a serious tracking risk to mobile phone customers in China, even when they travel abroad in countries with stronger privacy laws.

In a paper titled "Android OS Privacy Under the Loupe: A Tale from the East," the trio of university boffins analyzed the Android system apps installed on the mobile handsets of three popular smartphone vendors in China: OnePlus, Xiaomi and Oppo Realme. The researchers looked specifically at the information transmitted by the operating system and system apps, in order to exclude user-installed software. They assume users have opted out of analytics and personalization, do not use any cloud storage or optional third-party services, and have not created an account on any platform run by the developer of the Android distribution. A sensible policy, but it doesn't seem to help much. Within this limited scope, the researchers found that Android handsets from the three named vendors "send a worrying amount of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) not only to the device vendor but also to service providers like Baidu and to Chinese mobile network operators."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: As a smartphone operating system, Android strives to be a lightweight OS so it can run on a variety of hardware. The first version of the OS had to squeeze into the T-Mobile G1, with only a measly 256MB of internal storage for Android and all your apps, and ever since then, the idea has been to use as few resources as possible. Unless you have the latest Samsung phone, where Android somehow takes up an incredible 60GB of storage. Yes, the Galaxy S23 is slowly trickling out to the masses, and, as Esper's senior technical editor Mishaal Rahman highlights in a storage space survey, Samsung's new phone is way out of line with most of the ecosystem. Several users report the phone uses around 60GB for the system partition right out of the box. If you have a 128GB phone, that's nearly half your storage for the Android OS and packed-in apps. That's four times the size of the normal Pixel 7 Pro system partition, which is 15GB. It's the size of two Windows 11 installs, side by side. What could Samsung possibly be putting in there?!

We can take a few guesses as to why things are so big. First, Samsung is notorious for having a shoddy software division that pumps out low-quality code. The company tends to change everything in Android just for change's sake, and it's hard to imagine those changes are very good. Second, Samsung may want to give the appearance of having its own non-Google ecosystem, and to do that, it clones every Google app that comes with its devices. Samsung is contractually obligated to include the Google apps, so you get both the Google and Samsung versions. That means two app stores, two browsers, two voice assistants, two text messaging apps, two keyboard apps, and on and on. These all get added to the system partition and often aren't removable.

Unlike the clean OSes you'd get from Google or Apple, Samsung sells space in its devices to the highest bidder via pre-installed crapware. A company like Facebook will buy a spot on Samsung's system partition, where it can get more intrusive system permissions that aren't granted to app store apps, letting it more effectively spy on users. You'll also usually find Netflix, Microsoft Office, Spotify, Linkedin, and who knows what else. Another round of crapware will also be included if you buy a phone from a carrier, i.e., all the Verizon apps and whatever space they want to sell to third parties. The average amount users are reporting is 60GB, but crapware deals change across carriers and countries, so it will be different for everyone.

Password management company Dashlane has made its mobile app code available on GitHub for public perusal, a first step it says in a broader push to make its platform more transparent. TechCrunch reports: The Dashlane Android app code is available now alongside the iOS incarnation, though it also appears to include the codebase for its Apple Watch and Mac apps even though Dashlane hasn't specifically announced that. The company said that it eventually plans to make the code for its web extension available on GitHub too. Initially, Dashlane said that it was planning to make its codebase "fully open source," but in response to a handful of questions posed by TechCrunch, it appears that won't in fact be the case.

At first, the code will be open for auditing purposes only, but in the future it may start accepting contributions too --" however, there is no suggestion that it will go all-in and allow the public to fork or otherwise re-use the code in their own applications. Dashlane has released the code under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 license, which technically means that users are allowed to copy, share and build upon the codebase so long as it's for non-commercial purposes. However, the company said that it has stripped out some key elements from its release, effectively hamstringing what third-party developers are able to do with the code. [...]

"The main benefit of making this code public is that anyone can audit the code and understand how we build the Dashlane mobile application," the company wrote. "Customers and the curious can also explore the algorithms and logic behind password management software in general. In addition, business customers, or those who may be interested, can better meet compliance requirements by being able to review our code." On top of that, the company says that a benefit of releasing its code is to perhaps draw-in technical talent, who can inspect the code prior to an interview and perhaps share some ideas on how things could be improved. Moreover, so-called "white-hat hackers" will now be better equipped to earn bug bounties. "Transparency and trust are part of our company values, and we strive to reflect those values in everything we do," Dashlane continued. "We hope that being transparent about our code base will increase the trust customers have in our product."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google and Microsoft don't always take pains to make sure their products work great together -- Google originally declared Microsoft's Chromium-based Edge browser "not supported" by the Google Drive web apps; Microsoft is always trying to make you use Bing -- but it looks like Google's ChromeOS will start working a bit better with the Microsoft 365 service later this year. Google says ChromeOS will add a "new integration" for Microsoft 365, making it easier to install the app and adding built-in support for OneDrive in ChromeOS' native Files app.

This should allow users to search for and access OneDrive files the same way they get to local files, or files stored in their Google Drive account. The integration will be added in "the coming months," and users in ChromeOS' dev and beta channels will be able to access it before it rolls out to all ChromeOS users later this year. ChromeOS users can currently access OneDrive and other Microsoft 365 services through their web interfaces or Android apps installed via the Google Play Store, but they don't integrate with the built-in ChromeOS Files app the way that Google Drive does. This integration will help close that gap for people who, for example, use Google products at home but Microsoft products at work or vice versa.

During Samsung's Unpacked event on Wednesday where it unveiled its new Galaxy S23 smartphones, the company said it'll work with Google and Qualcomm on an upcoming mixed-reality platform. Samsung didn't mention any specific products or timeline. CNET reports: "It's more of a declarative announcement about how we are going to get it right in trying to build the XR ecosystem," TM Roh, president of Samsung's mobile division, said in an interview with CNET through a translator ahead of the event. "Google's been investing for a long time across both experiences and technology in AR and VR," Lockheimer said onstage. "Delivering this next generation of experiences requires cutting-edge advanced hardware and software. That's why our collaboration with Samsung and Qualcomm is so exciting."

Samsung has been relatively quiet about virtual reality aside from its Gear VR headset, which it launched several iterations of between 2015 and 2017. That device is a head-mounted holster for smartphone-powered VR experiences. Roh says there's been more demand from consumers for augmented and virtual reality, which is why the company chose this time to start discussing its plans. He says that the company has been researching the category for a while. "And now we believe that we have reached a certain threshold," he said.

The collaboration makes sense since Samsung, Google and Qualcomm already work together to develop smartphones. Samsung builds the hardware of its Galaxy phones, while Qualcomm supplies the processor and Google manages the software's underlying Android operating system. Roh said Google and Qualcomm will play similar roles in the development of this upcoming XR platform, although they will likely overlap in certain areas. Even though Qualcomm would supply the processor, for example, Samsung might make some optimizations, just as it's done for the chip inside the Galaxy S23 lineup. "Each player is taking leadership in each category, and then we will be working very closely together across the different categories," Roh said.

Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger are back. From a report: The Instagram co-founders, who departed Facebook in 2018 amid tensions with their parent company, have formed a new venture to explore ideas for next-generation social apps. Their first product is Artifact, a personalized news feed that uses machine learning to understand your interests and will soon let you discuss those articles with friends. Artifact -- the name represents the merging of articles, facts, and artificial intelligence -- is opening up its waiting list to the public today. The company plans to let users in quickly, Systrom says. You can sign up yourself here; the app is available for both Android and iOS.

The simplest way to understand Artifact is as a kind of TikTok for text, though you might also call it Google Reader reborn as a mobile app, or maybe even a surprise attack on Twitter. The app opens to a feed of popular articles chosen from a curated list of publishers ranging from leading news organizations like the New York Times to small-scale blogs about niche topics. Tap on articles that interest you and Artifact will serve you similar posts and stories in the future, just as watching videos on TikTok's For You page tunes its algorithm over time.

GitHub, Microsoft, and OpenAI "told a San Francisco federal court that a proposed class-action lawsuit for improperly monetizing open-source code to train their AI systems cannot be sustained," reports Reuters: The companies said in Thursday court filings that the complaint, filed by a group of anonymous copyright owners, did not outline their allegations specifically enough and that GitHub's Copilot system, which suggests lines of code for programmers, made fair use of the source code. A spokesperson for GitHub, an online platform for housing code, said Friday that the company has "been committed to innovating responsibly with Copilot from the start" and that its motion is "a testament to our belief in the work we've done to achieve that...."

Microsoft and OpenAI said Thursday that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the case because they failed to argue they suffered specific injuries from the companies' actions. The companies also said the lawsuit did not identify particular copyrighted works they misused or contracts that they breached.

Microsoft also said in its filing that the copyright allegations would "run headlong into the doctrine of fair use," which allows the unlicensed use of copyrighted works in some situations. The companies both cited a 2021 U.S. Supreme Court decision that Google's use of Oracle source code to build its Android operating system was transformative fair use.
Slashdot reader guest reader shares this excerpt from the plaintiffs' complaint: GitHub and OpenAI have offered shifting accounts of the source and amount of the code or other data used to train and operate Copilot. They have also offered shifting justifications for why a commercial AI product like Copilot should be exempt from these license requirements, often citing "fair use."

It is not fair, permitted, or justified. On the contrary, Copilot's goal is to replace a huge swath of open source by taking it and keeping it inside a GitHub-controlled paywall. It violates the licenses that open-source programmers chose and monetizes their code despite GitHub's pledge never to do so.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: At the Flutter Forward event, Google released Flutter 3.7 with more Material You widgets and menus support, while also teasing the future of the app development framework. Having grown from humble beginnings on Android and iOS, Google's Flutter SDK can now help you create apps for mobile, desktop, web, and more, all from a single Dart codebase. Since launch, over 700,000 Flutter apps have been published across various platforms.

Today in Nairobi, Kenya, the Flutter team hosted Flutter Forward, an event to connect with the growing global community of developers and showcase the future of app development. For starters, Flutter version 3.7 has now been released, bringing with it a whole host of Material 3 (Material You) widgets. To get a feel for what all is possible with the new generation of Material Design in Flutter, Google has prepared a fun web showcase that even allows you to toggle between Material Theming and Material You. You'll also find that Flutter 3.7 includes new support for creating menus for your app -- including native support for macOS menus, new cascading menu widgets, and the ability to add items to right-click/long-press context menus. The built-in text magnifier on Android and iOS also now works as expected with Flutter's text fields. You can learn more about the improvements of Flutter 3.7 in the full release blog.

Looking ahead, the Flutter team has been working for quite some time on replacing the Skia renderer with a more robust solution of its own. Currently dubbed "Impeller," Flutter's new rendering engine has made significant enough progress to now be ready for developers to test it with their iOS apps. [...] Google is also working on new ways to help Flutter apps integrate with the underlying OS or platform. [...] Meanwhile, for Flutter web apps, a new "js" library makes it easy to call your app's Dart code from the outer page's JavaScript code. Relatedly, you can now embed a Flutter view onto a page through a standard HTML div. Both of these can be seen in a fun demonstration page.

Elsewhere in Flutter web news, Google has made strides toward compiling Dart apps using WebAssembly. [...] In time, this should result in significant performance improvements for Flutter on the web. In addition to compiling to WebAssembly, the Dart team has also begun offering full support for the RISC-V architecture, with the ultimate goal of Flutter apps running on RISC-V. Another major announcement today is that Google is moving forward with its plans to release version 3.0 of the Dart programming language upon which Flutter apps are built. Dart 3.0 is available today for early alpha testing with a focus on requiring sound null safety.

Google is revising its business agreements with phonemakers and other partners in India and making a series of other changes in the South Asian market to comply with the local antitrust watchdog's directions in a major shift that could invite regulators in other regions to make similar suggestions. From a report: The Android-maker, which was slapped with a $161 million fine by the Competition Commission of India last year and was ordered to make a series of changes in its business practices, said Wednesday that it will allow smartphone vendors in India to license individual apps for pre-installation on their Android-powered devices. Google will also give consumers the ability to change search engine and use third-party billing options for apps and games purchases on Play Store starting next month, it said.

Apple is taking steps to separate its mobile operating system from features offered by Google parent Alphabet, making advances around maps, search and advertising that has created a collision course between the Big Tech companies. From a report: The two Silicon Valley giants have been rivals in the smartphone market since Google acquired and popularized the Android operating system in the 2000s. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs called Android "a stolen product" that mimicked Apple's iOS mobile software, then declared "thermonuclear war" on Google, ousting the search company's then-CEO Eric Schmidt from the Apple board of directors in 2009. While the rivalry has been less noisy since, two former Apple engineers said the iPhone maker has held a "grudge" against Google ever since. One of these people said Apple is still engaged in a "silent war" against its arch-rival. It is doing so by developing features that could allow the iPhone-maker to further separate its products from services offered by Google.

[...] The second front in the battle is search. While Apple rarely discusses products while in development, the company has long worked on a feature known internally as "Apple Search," a tool that facilitates "billions of searches" per day, according to employees on the project. Apple's search team dates back to at least 2013, when it acquired Topsy Labs, a start-up that had indexed Twitter to enable searches and analytics. The technology is used every time an iPhone user asks Apple's voice assistant Siri for information, types queries from the home screen, or uses the Mac's "Spotlight" search feature. Apple's search offering was augmented with the 2019 purchase of Laserlike, an artificial intelligence start-up founded by former Google engineers that had described its mission as delivering "high quality information and diverse perspectives on any topic from the entire web."

To help reduce the potential for malware, Android 14 will begin fully blocking the installation of apps that target outdated versions of Android. 9to5Google reports: For years now, the guidelines for the Google Play Store have ensured that Android developers keep their apps updated to use the latest features and safety measures of the Android platform. Just this month, the guidelines were updated, requiring newly listed Play Store apps to target Android 12 at a minimum. Up to this point, these minimum API level requirements have only applied to apps that are intended for the Google Play Store. Should a developer wish to create an app for an older version, they can do so and simply ask their users to sideload the APK file manually. Similarly, if an Android app hasn't been updated since the guidelines changed, the Play Store will continue serving the app to those who have installed it once before.

According to a newly posted code change, Android 14 is set to make API requirements stricter, entirely blocking the installation of outdated apps. This change would block users from sideloading specific APK files and also block app stores from installing those same apps. Initially, Android 14 devices will only block apps that target especially old Android versions. Over time though, the plan is to increase the threshold to Android 6.0 (Marshmallow), with Google having a mechanism to "progressively ramp [it] up." That said, it will likely still be up to each device maker to decide the threshold for outdated apps or whether to enable it at all. The report notes that it'll still be possible to install an outdated version of an app "through a command shell, by using a new flag."

Shadow is making its first acquisition as it announced that it would snatch up Genymobile, the company behind Genymotion. From a report: Shadow is better known for its cloud computing service that works particularly well for cloud gaming. It also offers a cloud storage service based on Nextcloud. As for Genymobile, the French startup has been around for more than a decade. It has specialized in low-level Android development. And in particular, it has developed a popular Android emulator so that developers can test their apps on multiple configurations and following different scenarios. Terms of the deal are undisclosed. Genymobile's co-founder and CTO Arnaud Dupuis will stay at the company and act as the chief executive of Genymobile starting March 1st. Genymobile's existing CEO Tim Danford will step back from the company's day-to-day activities and move to an advisor role.

An anonymous reader shares a report: It seems Google is feeling the heat from OpenAI's ChatGPT. The artificial intelligence-powered chatbot has taken the tech world by storm over the last couple months, as it can provide users with information they're looking for in an easy-to-understand format. Google sees ChatGPT as a threat to its search business and has shifted plans accordingly over the last several weeks, according to The New York Times. The report claims CEO Sundar Pichai has declared a "code red" and accelerated AI development. Google is reportedly preparing to show off at least 20 AI-powered products and a chatbot for its search engine this year, with at least some set to debut at its I/O conference in May.

According to a slide deck viewed by the Times, among the AI projects Google is working on are an image generation tool, an upgraded version of AI Test Kitchen (an app used to test prototypes), a TikTok-style green screen mode for YouTube and a tool that can generate videos to summarize other clips. Also in the pipeline are a feature titled Shopping Try-on (perhaps akin to one Amazon has been developing), a wallpaper creator for Pixel phones and AI-driven tools that could make it easier for developers to create Android apps. Pichai reportedly brought in Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin last month to meet with current leaders, review AI plans and offer input. The duo hasn't had much day-to-day involvement with the company since 2019, as they're focusing on other projects.

According to the latest official Android distribution numbers from Google, Android 13 is running on 5.2% of all devices less than six months after launch. 9to5Google reports: According to Android Studio, devices running Android 13 now account for 5.2% of all devices. Meanwhile Android 12 and 12L now account for 18.9% of the total, a significant increase from August's 13.5% figure. Notably, while Google's chart does include details about Android 13, it doesn't make a distinction between Android 12 and 12L. Looking at the older versions, we see that usage of Android Oreo has finally dropped below 10%, with similar drops in percentage down the line. Android Jelly Bean, which previously weighed in at 0.3%, is no longer listed, while KitKat has dropped from 0.9% to 0.7%. Android 13's 5.2% distribution number "is better than it sounds," writes Ryan Whitwam via ExtremeTech: These numbers show an accelerating pickup for Google's new platform versions. If you look back at stats from the era of Android KitKat and Lollipop, the latest version would only have a fraction of this usage share after half a year. That's because the only phones running the new software would be Google's Nexus phones, plus maybe one or two new devices from OEMs that worked with Google to deploy the latest software as a marketing gimmick.

The improvements are thanks largely to structural changes in how Android is developed and deployed. For example, Project Treble was launched in 2017 to re-architect the platform, separating the OS framework from the low-level vendor code. This made it easier to update devices without waiting on vendors to provide updated drivers. We saw evidence of improvement that very year, and it's gotten better ever since.