During MWC 2023 in Barcelona, Google announced several handy features coming to your Android smartphone through its upcoming Android 13 update.
As expected, the changes are more incremental than what you’d see in a larger Android 14 redesign, but nonetheless, the tools added to the best Android phones are still worth considering. They include new Emoji Kitchen beers, more convenient Google Keep Notes, and less noise in Google Meet calls (via Google Blog (opens in a new tab)).
The updates should be rolling out over the next few days and weeks, so be sure to check your device’s update settings to see when you can upgrade to the latest Android operating system.
Google Keep Widget
If you rely on Google Keep Notes to keep your life in order, you’ll be pleased to know that the app gets an Android widget that lets you see notes on your phone’s home screen. This can include your shopping list note that you can check off as you walk through the store, an image of a specific item you need to look for, or one of your many other reminders.
Plus, those of you with a WearOS watch like the Galaxy Watch 5 or Pixel Watch will get two new shortcuts, letting you create notes and to-do lists with just a few taps on your watch face.
Google Meet Noise Cancellation
This feature was already available on some Android devices, but it’s finally rolling out to more of them. Thanks to noise cancellation, the next time you need to join a meeting from your smartphone, you won’t have to worry about the noise around you, like that annoying neighbor mowing his lawn, or the noise of the coffee shop where you work. in – will be filtered. The system isn’t able to mask out all background noise, but it does a pretty solid job of making callers easier to understand.
New Cooking Emoji combos
Emoji Kitchen is the Gboard feature that automatically merges your Android emojis to create a combination that better captures your mood. If, for example, you want to communicate that you find something both breathtaking and hilarious at the same time, Gboard can merge the exploding head and crying emoticons into a single image to capture that emotion.
This Android update brings new possible emoji blends to help you convey an even wider range of emotions. In the teaser gif above, we see that a basketball fan is able to express his love for the game by merging basketball and sparkling heart emoji.
Improved Zoom for Chrome
Zooming into pages in Google Chrome was like zooming into a static image; words and icons enlarge but disappear from the screen. The next Android update will allow you to zoom a page up to 300% while maintaining the page layout and keeping everything on screen. You can also set a preferred content size, so each page is automatically enlarged when you load it.
This feature won’t roll out until March, but you can access it through the Chrome beta and access the app’s accessibility settings.
