Android 11 reaches Platform Stability with Beta 2, out now for Google Pixel phones

Google started the Android 11 developer preview program in February, ahead of the usual release schedule to give developers more time to adapt their apps to the new platform behaviors and APIs introduced in the new Android OS version. However, the overall release cycle was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the first Android 11 Beta was intended to be released at the Google I/O developer conference, the cancellation of that event caused Google to release an impromptu Android 11 Developer Preview 4 to make up for the delay. The first Beta went live in June and brought several new changes focusing on the themes of People, Controls, and Privacy. Now, Google is releasing Android 11 Beta 2 for Google Pixel devices.

This is Android 11’s Platform Stability release, which means the Android 11 SDK, NDK APIs, app-facing surfaces, platform behaviors, as well as restrictions on non-SDK interfaces have been finalized. Moving forward, there will be no changes in terms of how Android 11 behaves or how APIs function in the beta that follows. As a result, developers can now start updating their apps to target Android 11 (API level 30) without being concerned about any unexpected change in the future.

As with the Android 11 Developer Preview and Beta 1 builds, Beta 2 is available for installation on the Pixel 2, Pixel 3, Pixel 3a, and Pixel 4 series of devices. Other OEMs may follow with their own releases. You can head over to the Android beta enrollment page and sign up to receive an OTA update for your Google Pixel device or keep an eye out on the equivalent pages for OEMs participating in the Android Beta program.

Changes in Android 11 Beta 2

App Compatibility

App compatibility is the key objective of this release. Developers can start testing their apps by running Android 11 on their phone or Android Studio’s emulator to ensure the app runs smoothly and all the features and user flows work as intended. Developers can also integrate support for Bubbles, Conversations in notifications, Device Control, and Media Control in their apps using supported APIs.

Developer option to test and debug apps

Google is also adding some new Developer options to test and debug apps targeting Android 11. This will include new toggles to force-enable or disable changes without any need to change the targetSdkVersion or recompile the app for basic testing.

Updating target Android version

Google will allow developers a year to change the targetSdkVersion for their apps. This means that all new apps uploaded to the Google Play Store starting August 2021 and all updates to existing apps on Google Play starting November 2021 must target Android 11.

Reddit AMA

Lastly, Google will be hosting an AMA specifically for developers on the Android Developers subreddit (/r/AndroidDev) tomorrow, July 9th, between 12:00 PM PST / 3:00 PM EST and 1:20 PM PST / 4:20 PM EST. Developers from the Android engineering team will be answering questions related to App Compatibility with Android 11 along with some new tools. You can post your questions now on this thread and these will hopefully be addressed within the set time window.

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Google is slated to release the Android 11 “Release Candidate” build around the end of August. This will be the last beta before the final Android 11 code is submitted to the AOSP git repository. While Google hasn’t exactly revealed the exact date of the stable release – revealing only Q3 for the release, we may see the final release around mid-September. The update may be delayed due to unforeseen circumstances similar to the pandemic.

We do expect most bugs to be ironed out over the next couple of updates, but if you’re a developer, you can add your feedback here for Google to address the issues.

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Google may release the stable Android 11 update on September 8th

The first Android 11 Beta was released about a month ago, which means the next update should be coming very soon. Google shared its release timeline with the first Developer Preview, noting that the first two beta releases would come out in June and July. Subsequent releases, however, are scheduled vaguely for “Q3.” Google may have accidentally spilled the bins on the stable release date.

Google published a video for its “Hey Google” Smart Home Summit, and one of the slides lists a bunch of things for developers to check off before the stable release. The title of the slide is “Checklist for September 8th Android 11 launch.” Of course, that date isn’t exactly a shocking revelation. Android 10 was officially launched on September 3rd last year, after all. We always knew a Fall launch was coming, but now we can put a date to it.

This same date is when we can expect the source code to start being uploaded to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), and we can also expect the publication of the new Compatibility Definition Document (CDD) shortly thereafter. On September 8th, Google will release the stable Android 11 update for supported Google Pixel phones, which includes the Pixel 2, Pixel 3, Pixel 3a, and Pixel 4. Other OEMs will follow in the weeks and months afterward, with some releasing updates faster than others.

While September is very likely the target launch window, the exact date of September 8th could easily change. We’ve seen many things get delayed this year, including a few announcements from Google itself. Android 11 brings several exciting features that consumers may want. Conversations are more clearly defined in the notification shade, Smart Home controls get prominent placement in the Power Menu, Media Controls have been redesigned, and better privacy controls are present. There are plenty of developer-friendly changes as well.

Android 11 News on XDA

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Via: PhoneArena

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Win a HUAWEI MateBook 13 2020 Laptop [Open to All Countries]

Need a new laptop? Now is your chance to win a HUAWEI MateBook 13. This super-thin laptop comes with a precision touch screen, beefy specs, and a long-lasting battery. XDA users have a chance to win a free HUAWEI MateBook 13 by filling out the entry form below.

Prize information:

• Model: Huawei Matebook 13 2020
• CPU: 10th Gen Intel® Core i5-10210U Processor
• RAM: 8GB
• Display: 13″ (2160×1440) touchscreen, 200ppi, 1000: 1 contrast ratio
• Graphics: Intel® UHD Graphics 620
• Dimensions: 286mm wide x 14.9mm deep x 211mm high
• Storage: 512GB

Find out more about this laptop on the official page here.

 

Win a Galaxy Fold! [Open to all countries]

Good luck!

We thank Huawei for sponsoring this post. Our sponsors help us pay for the many costs associated with running XDA, including server costs, full time developers, news writers, and much more. While you might see sponsored content (which will always be labeled as such) alongside Portal content, the Portal team is in no way responsible for these posts. Sponsored content, advertising and XDA Depot are managed by a separate team entirely. XDA will never compromise its journalistic integrity by accepting money to write favorably about a company, or alter our opinions or views in any way. Our opinion cannot be bought.

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Xiaomi’s Mi TV Stick Android TV dongle appears in Europe for €40

Android TV has seen a bit of a resurgence in recent months. Thanks in large part to rumors of Google working on its own Android TV dongle, people are excited about the platform again. Unreleased hardware aside, there are some other new products on the horizon. One such product is the Xiaomi Mi TV Stick.

The Xiaomi Mi TV Stick has appeared a few times already. The company first teased it back in May and it got unboxed ahead of release last month. The dongle is now showing up in Europe, and we can see the official pricing for the first time. Xiaomi is listing the Mi TV Stick in Portugal for €39.99. The device is marked as coming “soon.”

Previous rumors suggested the Mi TV Stick would support 4K, but the model listed on Xiaomi’s website is only 1080p. That’s likely because of the processor used in the dongle being unable to output 4K resolution. The listed model has a micro USB port instead of USB-C as well as less RAM (1GB vs 2GB) and a less powerful processor. The full specifications can be seen below.

Mi TV Stick FHD:

• 1GB RAM
• 8GB storage
• Quad-core Cortex-A53 processor with Mali-450 GPU
• 1080p output
• Bluetooth 4.2
• Google Assistant
• Bluetooth remote with Voice Assistant key and dedicated Netflix and Amazon Prime Video buttons
• Support for Dolby Audio and DTS Surround Sound
• Dual-Band Wi-Fi
• Ports – HDMI (1), Micro USB port (1)

As mentioned, the price is €39.99 and it’s not currently available for purchase, though you can sign up to be notified when it is. The rumored launch date is July 15th, but we’re not sure which regions will be getting the Xiaomi Mi TV Stick. We’ll be keeping an eye out for its launch in other regions.

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Source: Mi Store | Via: 4gnews

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Google partners with Canonical to bring Flutter apps to Linux

Google has been hard at work creating and expanding Flutter for the past few years. When we last talked about Flutter, Google rebuilt DevTools entirely from scratch in Flutter for better performance, greater versatility, and to demonstrate their confidence in this app development framework. Google envisions Flutter as a programming framework that developers can use to build apps that target multiple systems, so the team is constantly working to improve Flutter’s support for platforms. Today, Google has announced that it is partnering with the Ubuntu Desktop Team at Canonical to bring Flutter apps to Linux.

To recap, Flutter is a cross-platform programming framework that essentially lets developers create apps with beautiful UIs across Android, iOS, web, and Desktop. Flutter as a programming framework makes use of Dart, the programming language, to create Flutter apps. Flutter 1.0 arrived in December 2018 after 10 months of being in beta. And now, at this stage, the framework’s support for building iOS and Android apps is quite mature. But that’s not the case for building web, macOS, Linux, or Windows apps. Google has been renewing its effort for non-mobile platforms, and today’s announcement is the most recent one in a line of releases for non-mobile platforms. Version 1.9 brought over early support for building apps for macOS, while v1.12 improved macOS and Web support and promoted them to the beta branch. Developers could technically create Flutter apps for Windows and Linux as well at that stage, but the libraries were in a pre-alpha state, and the APIs could change without notice.

Last month, Google showed off significant progress on building Flutter apps for Windows and Linux. In a Medium post, Product Manager for Flutter, Mr. Tim Sneath summarized the team’s progress on the framework’s support for building apps with desktop interfaces. The team added display density support, better mouse and keyboard support, platform queries, and a desktop navigation widget. Further, they were working on a plugin model that works across all platforms. Coupled with Dart’s Foreign Function Interface (FFI) and a “Win32” plugin, Flutter apps could behave like native Windows app that are shipped as an EXE file, and also be backward compatible up to Windows 7. Universal Windows Platform (UWP) support, meanwhile, enables support for platforms like the Xbox and Windows 10X.

Today’s announcement of Linux alpha for Flutter comes with the blessings of Canonical, the publisher of Ubuntu, which is the world’s most popular desktop GNU/Linux distribution. Thanks to this partnership, developers will be able to deploy their Flutter apps to the Snap Store or other modern Linux deployments. The Snap Store comes with Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa release, so having direct access to the Snap package management system is a big plus for deploying apps on Linux.

By making Linux a first class Flutter platform, Canonical is inviting application developers to publish their apps to millions of Linux users and broaden the availability of high quality applications available to them.

Canonical is also making a significant investment in the framework by dedicating a team of developers to work alongside Google’s developers to bring the best Flutter experience to the majority of Linux distributions. The announcement further promises that Canonical and Google will continue to collaborate to further improve Linux support and maintain feature parity with other supported platforms.

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Hands-on video reveals the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra in full detail

Samsung officially announced that Galaxy Unpacked 2020 will be held (virtually) on August 5th. The invites tease the previously leaked bronze renders of Galaxy Note 20 Ultra. As the event gets closer, we’re seeing more and more leaks. Earlier this week, we saw the device in the flesh for the first time, and now we’re seeing a hands-on video from the same source.

Our previous first look at the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra came from YouTuber “Jimmy Is Promo.” Now, Jimmy is back with a short hands-on video of the device. The video features the Note 20 Ultra (model SM-N986U) in Black running Samsung OneUI version 2.5. It’s shown alongside the Galaxy Note 10.

Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Forums

Compared to the Galaxy Note 10, the Note 20 Ultra appears to be ever so slightly thicker. The massive camera bump is noticeably thicker, unsurprisingly. The speaker and S Pen placement on the bottom has been shifted around a bit. Interestingly, the new S Pen fits perfectly inside the Note 10’s S Pen slot. Lastly, Jimmy shows the new S Pen pointer settings that were previously teased.

The Galaxy Note 20 Ultra is rumored to have a massive 6.87-inch WQHD+ resolution display with a 120Hz refresh rate, 4,500 mAh battery, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865/Exynos 990 SoC, and an improved 108MP main sensor with laser autofocus. The Note series is known for getting the “everything but the kitchen sink” treatment and the Note 20 Ultra embodies that more than any previous Note. All will be revealed next month.

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Source: @jimmyispromo

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Google Maps starts showing traffic lights on Android

Google Maps is undoubtedly one of the most popular apps in Google’s portfolio, and the company often releases updates to make the service even better. Since its 15th birthday earlier this year in February, the app has received a ton of new features like Live View AR navigation, integrated menu scanning, a new real-time location sharing UI, YouTube Music integration, and much more. Now, according to a recent report from Droid-Life, Google has started testing a new feature that will show traffic lights in Google Maps on Android.

The report cites screenshots taken by a reader who lives in West Des Moines, Iowa, which show traffic lights in several intersections around the city. The traffic lights are visible both while using the traditional map view and while navigating, however, they do appear slightly bigger and more noticeable while navigating. The feature is expected to give users a heads up when they’re about to reach a traffic light and even help them plan their route ahead of time to avoid any unnecessary delay.

As of now, the feature is limited to just showing the traffic lights on the map and Google hasn’t included any additional functionality for users. However, that might change by the time the feature is released to more users. The feature currently appears to be in its early stages of development as it’s only available for a small number of users in certain regions on version 10.44.3 of the app. It’s also worth noting that Apple Maps has had a similar feature since last year which offers additional functionality like using Siri to alert users when they’re about to reach a traffic light.

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Source: Droid-Life

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