Android 11 Beta
Android 11 focused on three key themes: People, Controls, and Privacy.
People: making Android more people-centric and expressive, reimagining the way we have conversations on our phones, and building an OS that can recognize and prioritize the most important people in your life:
- Conversation notifications appear in a dedicated section at the top of the shade, with a people-forward design and conversation specific actions, such as opening the conversation as a bubble, creating a conversation shortcut on the home screen, or setting a reminder.
- Bubbles help users to keep conversations in view and accessible while multitasking. Messaging and chat apps should use the Bubbles API on notifications to enable this in Android 11.
- Consolidated keyboard suggestions let Autofill apps and Input Method Editors (IMEs) securely offer context-specific entities and strings directly in an IME’s suggestion strip, where they are most convenient for users.
- Voice Access, for people who control their phone entirely by voice, now includes an on-device visual cortex that understands screen content and context, and generates labels and access points for accessibility commands.
Controls: the latest release of Android can now help you can quickly get to all of your smart devices and control them in one space:
- Device Controls make it faster and easier than ever for users to access and control their connected devices. Now, by simply long pressing the power button, they’re able to bring up device controls instantly, and in one place. Apps can use a new API to appear in the controls.
- Media Controls make it quick and convenient for users to switch the output device for their audio or video content, whether it be headphones, speakers or even their TV. You can enable this today from Developer Options, and it will be on by default in an upcoming Beta release.
Privacy: In Android 11, giving users even more control over sensitive permissions and working to keep devices more secure through faster updates.
- One-time permission lets users give an app access to the device microphone, camera, or location, just that one time. The app can request permissions again the next time the app is used.
- Permissions auto-reset: if users haven’t used an app for an extended period of time, Android 11 will “auto-reset” all of the runtime permissions associated with the app and notify the user. The app can request the permissions again the next time the app is used.
- Background location: In February, we announced developers will need to get approval to access background location in their app to prevent misuse. We're giving developers more time to make changes and won't be enforcing the policy for existing apps until 2021.
- Google Play System Updates, launched last year, lets us expedite updates of core OS components to devices in the Android ecosystem. In Android 11, we more than doubled the number of updatable modules, and those 12 new modules will help improve privacy, security, and consistency for users and developers.
MAJOR FEATURES IN SHORT
- Conversations: The notification shade now breaks out messages from your texting apps into their own section at the top
- Priority conversations: You can mark certain conversations as “priority,” which puts the sender’s avatar on your lock screen and optionally allows you to let them break through your Do Not Disturb settings
- Bubbles: You can have your texting threads pop out into a little bubble that floats over your other apps. It works just like Chat Heads for Facebook Messenger but is now available to any texting app.
- Notifications have simpler, easier-to-understand presets for “Alerting notifications” and “Silent notifications” and allow you more control over how those presets work
- Do Not Disturb lets you customize which apps or people are allowed to notify you when the mode is on
- Media controls have been moved up into quick settings, and you can select where your audio output goes now
- Screenshots now appear on the lower-left corner, just like they do on the iPhone
- Native screen recording should finally become an official, Android-level feature
- The power menu now serves as a kind of digital wallet, with controls for powering your phone, Google Pay cards and passes, and now smart home control
- The recents screen now has new buttons for taking a screenshot, sharing a screenshot, or selecting text
- You can replace your dock with suggested apps (but why would you, really?)
- There’s a new one-time permissionoption for location
- If you don’t use an app for a while, its permissions reset automatically
- Voice Access, the accessibility feature that allows you to control your phone by speaking, has been upgraded and can now understand “screen content and context, and generates labels and access points for accessibility commands.” Source: googleblog, Verge
MAJOR FEATURES IMAGES
