Android13 system will support exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table File System) file system natively for the first time, bringing the device the ability to handle files larger than 4GB on disk. Android 13 will officially arrive in a few months, but previous versions of the operating system are already letting us see some of the features that will be in it. One of them is a new type of unlocking, which has been talked about for months, but we have finally been able to see. It is the ability to unlock the phone using a Wear OS watch.
Android 13 will let you unlock your phone with a watch
This feature will be launched with the name Nearby Unlock to the market. We’ve already been able to learn more details about how it works.
Here’s an animation found within Google Play Services that illustrates this “Nearby Unlock” feature.
exFAT is a file system for flash memory introduced by Microsoft in WindowsEmbeded 5.0 onwards (including Windows CE5.0, 6.0, Windows Mobile5, 6, 6.1), and was introduced to address the fact that FAT32 and others do not support files of 4G and larger. For flash memory, the NTFS file system is not suitable for use, exFAT is more suitable. According to reports, some Android OEMs’ devices may already support the exFAT file system due to the fees they paid to Microsoft, with Samsung being one of the OEMs that paid for support.
Esper’s tech editor Mishaal Rahman found out that his Pixel6Pro supports the exFAT file system after upgrading from Android 12L to the Android 13 beta. That means that if you use a USB stick, SD card, or other storage device formatted in exFAT, the Pixel6 phone with Android13 will natively support installing them; previous Androids didn’t support the exFAT format and users had to use paid exFAT plugins like Paragon’s.
At I/O 2022, Google announced an upgrade to Nearby Share that will let users quickly copy text or images on one device and share it with another. This feature hasn't rolled out yet, but it's possible to enable it in the latest version of Google Play Services. Here's a demo: pic.twitter.com/Z1k7J8OcpV
— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) June 20, 2022
Nearby Unlock is seen as a new version or preview of the Smart Lock of the operating system. Users with Android 13 will be able to make use of this feature to securely unlock their phones. You will need to have a smartwatch with Wear OS as the operating system for this to be possible. The first one in which it will work is the Google Pixel Watch and hopefully, it will be coming to others as time goes by.
Thanks to this feature will be able to unlock the phone safely using the watch. The watch must be near the mobile and also unlocked. While wearing the smartwatch, the phone will remain unlocked at all times. This is a feature that can be useful when you want to see notifications and the fingerprint sensor hasn’t worked, for example.
This is one of the functions that will give more to talk about in Android 13. At least it is clear that it seeks to have a greater linkage between the operating system and Wear OS. Surely this feature can be used with more watches with this system and not only with the Google Pixel Watch.