Android 11

Google has announced an early developer preview of Android 11, the next version of Android. The changes so far are mostly for developers, but there’s a few neat new features, like chat Bubbles, better app permissions, and more.

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Android 11 beta is available today for Pixel phones. Google has changed around how you manage notifications from your text message apps, added bubbles, improved location permissions, and put smart home controls in the power menu. Dieter Bohn looks at everything that's coming up for Android.

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The best new user-facing features of the very first Android 11 Beta!

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The beta for Android's next version is available for download. If you've got a Pixel, you can give Android 11 a try. This is a fairly small update compared to some previous versions, and most of the changes we're seeing are around the notification shade. Apps now organize into silent and active notifications, but conversations get their own section. Additionally, the media player has migrated up into the quick settings menu, and can now resume audio from multiple apps. These refinements improve a few aspects of Android, but considering the bugs we also found, it's probably best to wait for the full release this fall.

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Let's take a first look at some of the new features coming to Android 11. We're running the public beta on a Pixel 4 and looking at Android's new bubble messages, changes to notifications, a built-in screen recorder (yay!) and some more flexible media controls.

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