Google launches Android 11 Developer Preview ahead of schedule for Pixel phones

I was on vacation for a few days, so I'm catching up on some of the more interesting news items from the past few days. This is one of them.

Following an inadvertent tease last week, Google today officially launched the Android 11 Developer Preview. This is the fifth consecutive year that the company is providing an early look at its next major operating system.

In more ways than one, this initial Android 11 preview is defined by an "earlier than ever" launch. The majority of past releases arrived in the second week of March, with Google this year wanting to give developers more time to provide feedback and prepare applications to new platform features.

Very much an early release, so there's not a lot of exciting user-facing features right now.