Tom's Hardware has a new reference guide for Android 11 features...
Android 11 has arrived — here's what it brings to your smartphone
www.tomsguide.com
I've played around with a few of them on my Pixel 3. A number of the features just seem to be playing catchup to Apple and Samsung. Media controls on the lock screen and notification shade (I was surprised my Pixel 4 with Android 10 didn't have this), improved permissions options for apps.
It's nice that there is a separate conversations group in notifications so they don't get lost in all the other notifications. However I disable notifications for a lot of apps I don't think are important, so I don't have much notification clutter to begin with. So nice, but not a big need for me.
Message bubbles are just evil I think. In this beta the feature can be turned on for messaging apps or just specific conversations, but isn't working yet. However from my experience with this in Facebook Messenger, it's annoying and distracting. I don't like the feature, and it's optional.
It's not available yet, but in Styles and Wallpaper it looks like we may be able to customize our lockscreen clocks and date like we can with Samsung phones. Cool.
If you remove apps from your dock, Android 11 will automatically fill in the available space with suggested apps. For a phone I can't see myself using this since I already have all that space filled with what I know I need frequently. But I could see this being useful on a tablet. Shame Google doesn't make tablets though.
I think Android 10 and 11 have shown me that Android has gotten to the point where your OS version is no longer as important as it used to be. If I got an Android 9 device, I wouldn't feel like I'm missing out on anything major. And sometimes third party apps can add the features I might be missing anyway.
I'm feeling very meh about Android 11. Not sure if that's a good thing or bad thing. I do wish there was something a bit more exciting.
en.wikipedia.org
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