Android 11 is the first major release since google ditched their dessert focus
code names last year but while Android's naming scheme is now objectively less
fun Android 11 actually has a few more
tangible features for users to play with than its predecessor which focused more
on under the hood improvements and yeah we know that your samsung or lg phone
has probably had all these features since 2011. can you just let pixel
owners have this moment please
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back in march we took a look at the Android 11 developer preview and while a
lot of features from that release made it through to the final version some of
them actually didn't now there are others that did make it through but
they were changed one of the first unusual things about the release of
Android 11 is that it's not only arriving for pixel devices beta versions
are already available for select oneplus oppo realme and xiaomi phones now this
news would make me a bit more optimistic that Android releases could roll out to
more devices on day one if a these
weren't chinese brands with limited availability in the west and b
three out of four of them weren't owned by the same freaking company also c it
was just a beta release so yeah Android
phone manufacturers still suck when it comes to getting new versions of Android
onto devices but because project mainline is now in
full swing that's google's initiative to break the core components of Android
into separate modules that can be individually updated through the play
store allowing out of date devices to get crucial security and feature patches
without doing a complete system update Android 11 brings the total number of
mainline modules to 25 up from 13. plus
big players like samsung and microsoft have committed to providing three years
of Android upgrades so the Android update situation should get
better just like lttstore.com has if you've seen the new big water bottles
also look at this shirt sweet alright enough preamble though
let's get into some features first up the new embedded media controls
this feature was included in some of the developer previews but in the final
release it looks way more polished when video or audio is playing these controls
can be found in the notification shade as part of the quick settings section
now before they lived down with the other notifications you know the common
folk if multiple media sources are active you can swipe between them or just swipe
them all away you can also tap in the top right corner to switch the audio
output device thank you that is an awesome Android 10 feature that was
formerly found in the expanded volume menu love quick access to that while these
new controls don't clog up your notifications with a giant media control
box they do take up space in the quick settings tiles so only six tiles are
displayed per page instead of nine meaning that it could take you like
three swipes to get to airplane mode that doesn't seem very quick especially
when the flight attendant catches you using data and you have to get an airplane mode like now where they're
going to toss you at the airlock thanks google
of course you can just move them around so speaking of airplane mode turning it
on will not turn bluetooth off if you have wireless earphones connected that
actually that's a real thank you google right there now we saw grouped
notifications show up in the developer preview but their behavior and their
design is a lot nicer here messages are
grouped into the conversations category and this along with Android 10's ability
to categorize app notifications as silent default or priority
yes turn what was a daunting wall of text
into far more controlled chaos another messaging feature is bubbles they're
essentially facebook chat heads but for any messaging app so if you want to use
them you enable bubbles system wide then you can enable them for specific apps
and even specific conversations so that you don't have every random message
floating around on your screen message bubbles are stacked so messenger
Android messages and whatsapp will all be accessible from the same bubble also
developers have to enable bubble support so as of now microsoft teams doesn't
work with it for example but me well honestly i've hated it ever
since facebook first came up with it so yeah if you like seeing a constant
reminder on your screen that solitude is a farce in modern society then good news
for you for the rest of us well it's one more thing to leave disabled
moving on to built-in screen recording we get to move on to built-in screen
record it's finally here in more or less the same form that we saw in the dev
preview you can choose whether to record in device audio the microphone or both
and you can also toggle the visibility of touch inputs so pixel owners you can
finally delete those sketchy third-party recorder apps my apologies by the way to
the developers of said apps az recorder actually very nice in Android 11 holding
the power button now brings up the upgraded power menu this feature was
added to Android 10 via pixel updates originally in addition to the normal
options to restart or turn off your phone there was also an emergency button
providing quick access to 911 and personal details like your name
emergency contacts and medical details then google pay cards were added so you
could quickly access payment cards and boarding passes which is great for the
drive-through like seriously it's freaking awesome and in Android 11 smart
home controls have now been added to the power menu allowing you to turn devices
on and off adjust levels for speakers and light dimmers and start google home
routines the revamped permission system has arrived virtually unmodified from
the dev preview allowing users to grant one-time permissions for certain apps to
say use your camera or location but only
right now and then next time you open that app it will have to ask for
permission again and then apps that do have long term access will have their
permissions reset if they're not used for an extended period of time this is
my personal favorite Android 11 feature though even though it's not a huge one
notification freaking history
i mean is that all i need to say about it no i'll okay i'll finish the thing
there's now a settings page that displays every notification you've
received in the past 24 hours so you can find
finally find that one you accidentally swiped away or that went off in your
pocket and you're like what even buzz i don't even know what's going on because
for some reason not all notifications have a time stamp
and you can even just use it to relive your favorite notification moments
sure now if you do install Android 11 on a non-pixel device you may miss out on a
few pixel first features that google has added so in maps when you and a contact
are sharing locations you can enter live view and get an ar indication where they
are that's pretty cool you can also allow a suggested apps row to appear on
your home screen containing you know whatever apps your phone thinks you
might need to use at the moment since it knows you so well we're basically all
living in a black mirror episode at this point and the multitasking menu now has
new options to capture your screen or select text in an app that one's pretty
minor but it's always annoyed me that on twitter or in messaging apps like google
hangouts you can only copy the text of the entire tweet or message so now you
can select just a little bit thanks google and also thank you google
and okay there's time to go through a couple other minor things quickly here
um what would be a good name for that uh quack bats really yeah no
you can pin commonly used apps to the share menu voice access which lets you
control your phone with just your voice is more intuitive and responsive there's
support for wireless Android auto which is great if your car supports it
although apparently early users have been experiencing glitches there's
better support for playing specific content at various refresh rates per
your preferences and there's now native hinge angle detection for foldable
devices that's cool and of course there's 117 new emoji including the dodo
it's back from extinction baby there's also the easter egg which is a
cute little reference to spinal tap you know it goes up to 11.
get it so then what didn't make it in well unlike Android 10 it seems like all
the features google has on their official Android 11 page are here
looking at you live captions which only finally rolled out to Android 10 devices
a few months ago there was a reference to some kind of battery sharing text
similar to samsung's wireless powershare in the beta it's not here but maybe we
could see that in the pixel 5. there was also an experimental gesture that
allowed you to use a double tap on the back of your phone as a customizable
gesture that's not here but then it is an iOS 14
which just came out so i don't know how that happened and you also can't
customize the individual colors of quick settings tiles although that ended up
looking pretty ugly so i'm actually fine with that
so yeah not the most exciting release of Android ever i mean we're not getting
anything revolutionary like iOS 14's widgets
because we've already had those for 10 years excuse me but there's enough good stuff here to
make your phone feel a little more fresh
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guys enjoyed this video go watch the one where we fix Windows
that definitely generated a stir in the community do you know about this
yeah the community the uh the community team that's been working on that project
they have had to clean up a few things but they're they're cool guys
cool team chatted with them after