HTC leaks new features of Android 4.3

Google is expected to debut Android 4.3 this month at their Google IO developers conference, but we don’t know exactly what will be included in the new update. Thanks to a meetup posting by HTC, we now have an idea of two new features that should be included in Android 4.3. At an event on Thursday, May 16th, in San Francisco, HTC will provide an overview of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and Open GL ES 3.0, new features they describe as having “arrived” on Android (in the future tense).

Bluetooth Low Energy (or Bluetooth Smart) is aimed at always-on devices like heart rate monitors, key finders, and multi-sensor kits (temperature, pressure, humidity, accelerometer). A couple Android devices have supported it through their own Bluetooth stack, but it has not been an official part of Android til now.

OpenGL ES 3.0 is the latest mobile graphics specification and it’s currently supported by new chips from Qualcomm. The Snapdragon 600, found in the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S 4, is the latest chip to support OpenGL ES 3.0, and we can’t wait to see what new games will be created to take full advantage of the new APIs.

We expect Google to unveil a ton of other mobile-related news (Ron Amadeo of Android Police has a nice list), so be sure to tune into Google IO from May 15-17th.

Update: HTC’s Dario Laverde sent the following statement to Slashgear. ”To clarify, we’ll have some surprises for the meeting but we’re not claiming unannounced new features here – we’ll be demoing features and APIs already available on HTC devices.”