Android 13 could bring, among many other things, a significant reduction in video game loading times: Mishaal Rahman of Esper has discovered a new method called setGameState in the GameManager APIs that, as the name indicates, allow the game to communicate its status to the operating system; some examples include:
- Indication whether it is in the foreground or not, and consequently whether it can be interrupted
- Indication whether resources need to be loaded
Based on this information, the operating system can send to the HAL that deals with energy management a rough indication of loading times, and so the HAL can activate the new profile called GAME_LOADING which, among other things, allows the CPU to reach the maximum performance level (the various parameters of the profile can be customized by the various manufacturers).
In a nutshell: as mentioned, the user should spend less time looking at loading screens – or reading the “useful tips”, in the most fortunate cases.
At this stage, it seems that Google is still considering whether or not to make the new profile GAME_LOADING a fundamental requirement of all the new native Android 13 smartphones. However, it is worth noting that due to the initiative known as GRF (Google Requirement Freeze), the imposition of the new standard cannot be retroactive.
In other words, for all devices that have arrived on the market with previous versions of Android the implementation will be exclusively at the discretion of the manufacturers. Meanwhile, it is worth remembering that by now we should be very, very close to the launch of the first Beta of the operating system, which is scheduled for mid-April, after the first two Developer Previews.