Ron Amadeo
Hot off of releasing Android 12L last month, Samsung is shipping its first finished builds of Android 13 this week. The Galaxy S22 (regular, Plus, and Ultra) is the first phone to get the update, with carriers like Verizon listing the update as available.
Samsung’s Android 12L release in September arrived six months after the official release on foldables and tablets, and this Android 13 release represents a two-month wait from the Google release. Part of the reason for the quick turnaround might be that Android 13 is a very small release, with only things like a notification permission and a new media player to point to as user-facing features. The Galaxy S22 never got Android 12L, so this is its first major OS update.
Samsung’s Android 13 skin is called “One UI 5,” and the company detailed some of its features earlier this month. Samsung’s headline additions are “Bixby Text Call,” which lets you answer a call and speak to the caller through text-to-speech. A “Routines” feature can automatically trigger functions based on the time of day. You can set a video as your background wallpaper, and you can stack widgets on top of each other to swipe through them.
Android 13 is only hitting the S22 for now. 9to5Google spotted a timeline Samsung sent to Korean users detailing the Korean releases of Android 13 for various models. Korean timelines aren’t always the same as US schedules, but they’re usually close. That timeline has the S20, S21, Fold/Flip 3, and Fold/Flip 4 being updated in November, with older and midrange devices slipping to December and January.
Samsung’s One UI 5 video.
