You can now TRY Android 13 on your phone! But you should probably hold on

Android 13 Beta 1 has been released for developers and users to play with. Should you download it on your phone and try it out?

Android 13 Beta 1 is now available for Pixel users to try out. (HT Tech)

You may not be knowing it but Android 13 has been around for a while! Yes, if you are an app developer, Google had made Android 13's developer preview available for the past few months. And as with the development cycle of every Android versions, Android 13 now reaches its beta stage. This means that for the first time, regular folks like you and me can try out Android 13 easily. That said, Android 13 is still in beta and that requires some caution.

The Android 13 Beta 1 is the first of four planned beta over the next few months, where Google will release new features for testing in successive versions. If all things go well, Android 13 could be hitting out phone by September 2022. Beta versions of Android 13 will only be available on Google Pixel devices as of now, and other manufacturers are yet to announce support for their devices. Installing the beta on your Pixel device is fairly easy.

Android 13 reaches beta stage

If you are interested in trying out the beta build of Android 13, you need to ensure two things to get going.

-You need to have a Google Pixel device with you. In India, you can try it out on the Pixel 4a, which was the last Pixel device launched in the country.

-You need to register for the Android beta program. Once done, your Pixel device will automatically download the update as an OTA download.

Over the next few months, the subsequent beta versions of Android will be downloaded automatically as OTA updates. Note that these versions of Android will be buggy and unstable, hence you should avoid using it on your main phone.

As part of Android 13's new feature list, users will gain access to choosing permissions for granular access to media files, which is more like the system on iOS. Hence, you will need to grant apps the access separately to images, videos, and audio files. There are no major visual changes from Android 12's Material You design theme yet but Google could be revealing more at the I/O Developer conference.