The good news is that Android 13 for TV has been released to developers to get their mitts on. The bad news? It'll likely be months before it reaches our TVs or streaming devices, FlatpanelsHD reports.
Android 13 for TV is a fairly minor update, mainly improving performance and accessibility – both important, undoubtedly, but there are no big-ticket new features to shout about. It's available now to developers, so they can take advantage of its new abilities when creating their apps and services.
For example, one of the new features lets users set their preferred resolution and refresh rate on supported HDMI source devices. There are also power management improvements for an even more power-efficient standby mode, updated user controls for accessing the Google Assistant microphone on the remote, and a new keyboard layouts API to allow different language layouts on external keyboards.
So when will we get it? No time soon. As FlatpanelsHD points out, Android 12 for TV was released in December 2021 and finally landed on TVs and devices in October 2022 – nearly a full year later. It's therefore logical not to expect to see Android 13 touch down until the latter half of 2023 at the earliest.
Android TV (aka Google TV) features on some big-name TVs such as those made by Sony, and the five-star Chromecast with Google TV streaming device. Earlier this year it added support for multiple profiles, a feature that has long been a staple of many other TV/streaming operating systems.
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