Esper Blog

Google's official blog posts on new Android releases usually leave out a ton of info. If you're curious about what many of the other features introduced in Android 13 are, I wrote a summary over on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/wp0skh/50_features_in_androi… This summary is just for user-facing features and doesn't mention any of the new APIs, app-facing behavioral changes, or most of the platform changes. My ongoing Android 13 changelog (currently at >32k words, ~170 min estimated read time lol) covers all of that and then some: https://blog.esper.io/android-13-deep-dive/

Detailed post here: https://blog.esper.io/android-13-deep-dive/

"Currently, no Android devices on the market ship with the Virtualization module — not even Google’s own Pixel 6 — but this is set to change with the upcoming Android 13 release." https://blog.esper.io/android-dessert-bites-5-virtualization-in-androi…

Coming back to our discussions, Android 13 is finally making ARM MTE a reality, so that is yet another front. While only available as developer mode flag, this might mean it will be enabled by default on Android 14, as this is how such kind of features tend to be integrated into Android (1 OS generation for testing purposes and fine tuning). https://blog.esper.io/android-13-deep-dive/#memory_tagging_extension I find a bit ironic that for all the hate Oracle gets, Solaris SPARC has been the most successful UNIX to tame C, and has taken so long for this kind of features to spread into other platforms.

> Currently, no Android devices on the market ship with the Virtualization module — not even Google’s own Pixel 6 — but this is set to change with the upcoming Android 13 release. In fact, Google is currently testing its new virtualization tools on the Pixel 6; if you build AOSP with the target aosp_oriole_pkvm, you’ll find that com.android.virt will be automatically inherited. I don’t know if Google will enable pKVM on the Pixel 6 series with the Android 13 update, but there is evidence that Google plans for Android 13 to include the first release of the pKVM hypervisor and virtual machine framework. Original blog: https://blog.esper.io/android-dessert-bites-5-virtualization-in-androi…

It seems like they're taking Android in a Qubes-like direction. https://blog.esper.io/android-dessert-bites-5-virtualization-in-androi…

Indeed, that's one of Google's official use cases: https://twitter.com/salt___doll/status/1492865396692586497 Recently, they've also focused on using VMs to isolate parts of the system and apps: https://twitter.com/salt___doll/status/1492872311652765700 Mishaal Rahman has written a detailed post about virtualization on Android: https://blog.esper.io/android-dessert-bites-5-virtualization-in-androi…

I'll repeat myself: long term OS support is better on iPhones. With this said, we must look at what the "security updates" are fixing. Above you mentioned that the 5S received a security update in August. According to the changelog, all they fixed was a exploit on Webkit (essentially the browser). They didn't even update Webkit/Safari to the latest version (it doesn't work on iOS 12). Do you know how Android would handle that security update? A simple app update via the Play Store, no restart required. Someone running Android 7, which was released 2 years before iOS 12, is using the latest version of Webview/Chrome (108)... in this regard, Android is actually better than iOS. There's a big difference between iOS and Android here. On iOS, things like Safari, Photos, Camera, Mail, etc, are part of the system and fixes/new features are presented as part of an updated OS. On Android these things are updated individually via the store and, if applying the same thinking as Apple, receive many "major updates" and many "security updates" every year. Another point to consider when comparing updates is that since Android 10 (2019) different parts of the system get updates directly from Google ( see: https://blog.esper.io/what-is-project-mainline/ ). A security update for WiFi/Bluetooth, for example, may not need a system update from the OEM. Android's fragmentation problem forced Google to come up with other ways to update Android. Even for features, many (eg: the alternative to…

He needs to do this: "Many apps that let you download and open arbitrary files use this installation method, as it’s easier to simply hand off installation to the system Package Installer, which responds to intents to view and install user-acquired APK files. Apps that are sideloaded via browsers, mail clients, and messaging apps usually use this method, hence they’ll be subjected to Android 13’s restrictions." "Apps can use Android’s new setPackageSource() API to tell the system that the app came from a user-acquired APK via the parameters PACKAGE_SOURCE_LOCAL_FILE or PACKAGE_SOURCE_DOWNLOADED_FILE. This can be used by apps implementing the session-based package installation API to trigger the same behavior when sideloading arbitrary APK files. For example, the Files by Google app uses the session-based API to install apps even though it isn’t an app store. In order to protect users, Files by Google could use the setPackageSource() API to tell the system Package Installer when apps come from user-acquired APKs, thus subjecting those apps to Android 13’s restrictions." From: https://blog.esper.io/android-13-sideloading-restriction-harder-malwar…