Google has posted a detailed blog post covering all the changes and new features that Android 11 will bring over Android 10, as it releases the first Beta build of Android 11. As per Google, Android 11 focuses on three key themes: People, Controls, and Privacy.
Update: Apart from the official changes and new features provided by Google and listed below, here are all changes and new features reported by Nokia smartphone users (Thanks Krishna) who updated to Android 11. You can track Android 11 roll-out to Nokia smartphones by clicking here.
What’s New –
- Media Controls- Works well with any music app expect YT Music (option added under Settings>Sound)
- Bubbles – Working Well with Google Messages (Option available under Apps and Notification>Notification)
- Notifications are categorized well and Notification History is available in Settings>Apps and Notifications>Notifications
- Native Screen Recorder is available and can record the screen as well – As of now ,No Issues/bug are found
- Screenshot Function from Recent App List works well
- New Power Menu Added ,Currently Basic Options are available (Option added in Settings>System>Gesture)
- App Permission are now improved as stated in Android 11
- Gesture Sensitivity Setting is available in Settings>System>Gesture
- Quick Setting Panel now shows only two rows instead of legacy three rows
Other Additions-
- Dark theme now gets even darker in settings page
- Clock on Top-Left gets am/pm when it set to 12-hr format
- Replaced single dot with two dots on status bar
- While Adding New Finger Print , Now it shows Percentage
- Hey Google Works well and it respond quickly
- Added New Lens Icon in Google Search Bar
- Added Google One App (Only noticed after factory reset)
- UI imprvements in Google Wall Paper App
- Mobile Data gets replaced with Cellular Data in Network and Internet>SIM cards
Official list of Android 11 changes and new features:
Android 11 comes with many UI changes like new conversation notifications UI, new Media Player controls, Bubbles in conversational apps. Check the official “what’s new in system UI” video that Google has posted explaining UI changes.
You can have a look at the detailed changes and new features list provided by Google below.
People: we’re 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. More here.
- 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. More here.
Privacy: In Android 11, we’re 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. More here.
- 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. More here.
- 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. More here.
- 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.
Developer friendliness: We want to make it easy for developers to take advantage of the new release, so to make compat testing easier, we’ve:
- Gated most breaking changes until you target Android 11 (so they won’t take effect until you explicitly change your manifest)
- Added new UI in developer options to let you toggle many of these changes for testing
- added a new Platform Stability release milestone where all API and behavior changes will be complete, so you can finalize your app updates knowing the platform is stable.
