Google launches the Android 11 Developer Preview today
It's a bit earlier than the usual March release, but today Google is launching the first Android 11 Developer Preview. This first OS preview is coming to the Pixel 2, 3, 3a, and 4, along with generic system images for Project Treble devices. It also has a new name. Typically these releases have been denoted by a letter-Android 10 was the "Android Q Preview"-and while Android 11 is still called "Android R" internally, publicly this is the "Android 11 Developer Preview" to all us non-Googlers. True to form, Google has already started with the Spinal Tap references and starts the blog post with a dial that goes to 11.
For now we're just working off a giant blog post with lots of bullet points, and nearly zero screenshots, so we're not sure what the scope of this release is really like. We'll have a hands-on later, but for now, here are some highlights.
One of the most-used features of Android 11 will probably be a new "one-time permission" option for apps that want to access location, microphone, and camera data. In Android 10, Google added the ability to grant a permission to an app only when it was running in the foreground, and now users will be able to grant access to a permission a single time. This is already in iOS, and it makes a lot of sense for certain apps.
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