Android 11 Review: What’s The New Features

The brand-new Android 11 has just come out for select devices and phones. As we’ve come to expect by now the new version of Android is rolling out first on Google’s Pixel phones, the beta is available across some other devices but the stable version is pixel only for now so what’s changed well for starters.

Android 11 Features

User Interface

The UI has become more fluid and responsive because of tuning and optimization.

A few of the visible changes in the UI has to do with messaging. Messaging notification is usually cluster together but now on the messaging apps, a dedicated space called ”conversations” makes it simple to see them at a glance.

Additional to this, is system-wide support for floating bubbles for chat & conversations sort of like chat heads from the messenger app so no matter which service you use to communicate with multitasking is a breeze.

Emoji

Android 11 supports the New Emoji 13.0 set which includes things like ”Man-in-tuxedo and Beaver”.

Screen Recording

A handy feature that you can activate with a quick toggle which will let you capture what’s going on the screen and its available to all manufacturer UI

Media

The media playback on the notification has been refined to be much cleaner especially when you have multiple media apps opened at the same time, the playback controls are now located above notifications with a carousel that you can swipe through (rather than having a separate panel for each media app).

Easy Smart Connection

We use phones to control a lot of smart devices around the house. Android 11 ” long pressing the power button” opens a dedicated space for smart connections.

Connectivity

More developer tools have been added for developers to take better advantage of those faster network speeds and lower latency.

Display

with the recent phone having a high refresh rate display, Android 11 helps with that by supporting variable refresh rates.

The Android OS can automatically adjust to individual apps and games set the preferred frame rate to save energy and also theirs more support for an app with displays with extremely curved edges.

Foldable devices can track the hinge angle to enable extra app features and display modes.

Security Update

There are few changes to how privacy is handled on OS 11. These include:

• One-time permission: You can choose to grant app access just once.
• Auto-Reset Permission: If you haven’t used an app for a long period, the permissions will auto-reset.
• location information now requires multiple levels of permission, so apps in the background won’t access or track your location unless you want them.
• Increase the number of Google Play Store modules to give more security and privacy-related updates.

Scope Storage

A new feature that allows apps to have a separate folder for its data rather than using a shared one thus limiting the access that an app has to potentially private storage space.