Android 11 is here — or, at least, the first super-unstable, not-for-daily-driving Developer Preview is here. Although we'll get a more stable build in the coming months, right now the only way to try out this new version is to flash it the old-fashioned way with a manual download and sideload. Here's where you can pull those images down.
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When Google started testing Android 10, it quickly upset developers with far-reaching changes that would lead to broken apps once the OS would reach stable, such as Scoped Storage. That's probably one reason why the company decided to postpone the enforcement of the new file management API to Android 11, which it has just released in the form of a developer preview. To make the transition easier this time around, Google worked hard on prioritizing backward compatibility, so projects that don't target the new OS won't outright break once it's released.
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Project Mainline was one of the most welcome improvements in Android 10 and it's already credited for delivering some valuable security patches and subtle enhancements. With Android 11, the role of Project Mainline will be growing even more substantial and will introduce 12 new modules that will open up even more potential for Android to improve without the need for full blown firmware updates.
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Smartphones already store tons of privileged information from credit cards and boarding passes, but they may soon replace our driver's licenses, our passports, and maybe even our keyfobs, too. We got a hint of this with the reveal of a new support library back in March, now, Google has laid out a roadmap for Android devices to store identity credentials in a future version of the OS. That roadmap, however, is highly dependent on how the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) will implement its standards on electronic IDs.
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One of the worst things your phone can do when you're taking a photo or video is vibrate and ruin your shot or, even worse, blast a notification tone and ruin the entire moment. Well, long-suffering mobile photogs, take a deep breath: Android 11 will include APIs for camera apps to mute those alerting notifications while you're using them.
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The first developer preview of Android 11 is finally out, and now that there are OTA images we can flash to devices, we're starting to discover more features than what Google mentioned in the official announcement. One of those hidden features is a scheduled mode for dark theme, something that was strangely missing from last year's Android 10 release.
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We're officially on the road to Android 11, which means a whole round of developer preview builds are on the way to Pixel phones — as well as other non-Google phones likely to be announced at I/O in May that will go through their own beta stack. Unfortunately, for O.G. Pixel and Pixel XL owners, they won't be joining for the ride.
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Android 11 is now official, and Google is releasing the first Developer Preview for this new version starting today. The software changes this time sound ambitious, with Google essentially taking most of its work on Android 10 and (literally) turning it up to 11, featuring enhancements to privacy and security, improvements to Project Mainline, a new dedicated "conversations" section for notifications, and tweaks to better harness 5G — all among a much longer list of changes just too big to include here. You can check it out for yourself by manually flashing it onto supported Pixel phones (everything but the 2016 OGs).
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Privacy has always been an important consideration for smartphones, but over the past two years or so, it has become a key component of Android updates — Android 9 and 10 both introduced breaking changes designed to better protect users. The first developer preview of Android 11 went live today, and to the surprise of nobody, there's another round of privacy-focused features.
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We're always on the lookout for what's to come with the future of Android, and if you're a developer, you may want to check out Android Studio right now. The Android R Preview SDK just appeared in the SDK Manager, meaning there's likely some new stuff to poke through.
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