Mobile Foundation compatibility for Android 13 RC

Similar to the earlier releases, Android 13 includes behavior changes, new features and APIs that may affect your app. Android has always been about personalization, allowing you to select the device, service and experience that is right for you. Android 13 focuses on developing an operating system that is secure by default and private by design, making all your devices work better together.

Android 13 introduces various new Features and APIs, Behavior changes for developers and end users.

Mobile Foundation Support for Android 13 RC

We have verified various features of MobileFirst Platform Foundation on the Android 13 Release Candidate (RC) for MobileFirst Platform Foundation v8.0.

Here are some notable feature compatibility tests that were performed with Mobile Foundation v8.0.

• Invoking backend procedures through adapters
• Application Authenticity
• Application Management
• JSONStore
• Direct Update
• Oauth Flow
• Certificate pinning
• Device SSO
• Analytics
• Push Notifications
• Appcenter
• In-App Feedback
• Live update

We encourage you to start testing your application(s) with Android 13 RC.

Changes that need attention

Notification runtime permission

Android 13 (API level 33) introduces a new runtime permission for sending non-exempt notifications from an app: POST_NOTIFICATIONS. This change helps users focus on the notifications that are most important to them.

If you continue to target 12L (API level 32) or lower, you lose the opportunity to request the permission in the context of your app’s functionality.

Note: Apps don’t need to request the POST_NOTIFICATIONS permission in order to launch a foreground service. However, apps must include a notification when they start a foreground service, just as they do on previous versions of Android.

To request the new notification permission from your app, update your app to target Android 13 and complete a similar process compared to requesting other runtime permissions, as shown in the following section.

The permission that you need to declare in your app’s manifest file appears in the following code snippet:

<manifest ...>
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.POST_NOTIFICATIONS"/>
<application ...>
    ...
</application>
</manifest>

Be sure to also review the list of behavior changes that affect all apps running on Android 13.

Disclaimer: Some of the action items that are mentioned in the list above are not under IBM’s control. Therefore, we expect developers and IT managers to ensure that their infrastructure is up to date according to Android requirements.