Here is What’s New in Android 11 Beta

Google was originally scheduled to make some announcements on June 3 that were on hold due to the canceling of Google I/O. It was also supposed to release the Android 11 Beta on June 1 for the public (Android 11 is still under an extended “Developer Preview” phase). The event was recently postponed due to the ongoing tension across the United States.

Rather than be super vague about this, I'll just say it up front:

Two people DMed me saying they got the Android 11 beta OTA update on their Pixel 4 XL.

Build #: RPB1.200504.018

— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) June 1, 2020

Despite Google’s decision to postpone the event and release of the Android 11 Beta, it seems that the update was inadvertently pushed to some small number of Pixel devices. This, as reported by @mishaalRahman on Twitter. It’s unclear whether the users were on the most recent Developer Preview or if they were running official software.

Some new features of Android 11 were found in the new Beta. Here’s everything new that user’s who downloaded that better found:-

Several new icon shape overlays:

IconShapeVessel
IconShapeTaperedRect
IconShapePebble
This is the new “power menu” settings in Android 11. This will control the cards & passes and Controls feature that I tweeted about earlier today.

passes and controls individually Screenshots of these 3 icon shapes

New submenu for enabling Bubble notifications. Settings > Apps & Notifications > Notifications > Bubbles.

New options to control app suggestions in the Pixel Launcher

Onboarding/tutorial messages for the feature.

Remember the wild media player in Quick Settings experiment we found in DP1?

It’s live in Beta 1 as a Developer Option called “media resumption.”

New developer option: “Wi-Fi-enhanced MAC randomization”

source.android.com/devices/tech/c…

Google added graphics to the TalkBack and Select to Speak Accessibility settings.

By the way, if it doesn’t seem like there’s much we’re finding in Android 11 here, don’t be misled. I’m only documenting changes that we found since Android 11 DP4.

You’ll find all the other changes we documented here:

In “Styles & wallpapers” > Clock, there’s still only the default clock option for the lock screen. Hopefully, a future beta adds more clock options!

In case you’re wondering, these users can’t test the new “device controls” feature since there aren’t any (real) applications out there that take advantage of the Controls API yet.