
Android 11 - loyukfai
https://www.android.com/android-11/
======
thanhhaimai
The change I like the most is the permission change:

"If you haven't used an app in a while, you may not want it to keep accessing
your data. So Android will reset permissions for your unused apps. You can
always turn permissions back on."

"Give one-time permissions to apps that need your mic, camera or location. The
next time the app needs access, it must ask for permission again."

~~~
bogwog
I wonder if that applies to Google's own apps

~~~
programbreeding
It does. Here is Maps + Location [0]. And here is Google Home + Mic [1]. I
just picked 2 random google services that seemed like they would rely on
location (Maps) and microphone (Home).

[0] [https://i.imgur.com/RSN239u.png](https://i.imgur.com/RSN239u.png)

[1] [https://i.imgur.com/x5vCg5W.png](https://i.imgur.com/x5vCg5W.png)

~~~
bogwog
But do those permissions get revoked automatically if you don't use the apps
for a while? (the "permissions auto-reset" feature)

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mikece
As an operating system Android is continuing to get a little more modular,
allowing more "user observable functionality" to be updated independent of an
OS version upgrade (or waiting on a carrier or OEM to approve such an
upgrade). Unfortunately, even more of capability of "Android" is being
delivered by the very-closed-source Google Mobile Service (GMS) while the
feature set of AOSP is dwindling to being "mere phone without the smarts." At
this point what we call Android is about as closed source as Apple's iOS. It's
too bad the tribes and factions wanting to build a truly open Linux phone
can't bury the hatchet and rally behind a single implementation.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
> At this point what we call Android is about as closed source as Apple's iOS.

On iOS you can’t side-load apps. You can only run native code if it has been
manually approved by Apple and acquired via their special App Store. There are
a handful of exceptions but they have their own limitations.

Android is at worst as closed as Windows, but not more. Some perspective is
called for.

~~~
mikece
Side-loading on iOS is possible: [https://www.notebookcheck.net/You-can-now-
sideload-unverifie...](https://www.notebookcheck.net/You-can-now-sideload-
unverified-apps-on-iOS-without-Jailbreak-or-revokes.461039.0.html)

And it's always been possible if you have a developer account (and I might be
wrong, because I quit mobile development to focus on cloud but I think you
don't even need a paid developer account to build and load an app from source
code anymore -- but I could be wrong).

~~~
throwaway2048
Subject to ridiculous restrictions, like an app only lasting 7 days before
being disabled.

------
sto_hristo
Desktop mode. Please, desktop mode already. These devices have as much or more
ram and logical processors than my last office computer. Office tasks have
been more than capable to be performed on such a device. No third party hack,
but native and official support for desktop mode.

Also, i am so tired of renting phones - give us the root account by default.
If i would buy a new device, i will want to gain control of it.

~~~
untog
Didn’t Samsung offer desktop mode at one point? I think it got canned because
no one used it, sadly.

~~~
sto_hristo
Samsung still does it, but they are a third party thing, support is not
native. Some apps just don't work well as a window.

Such a thing implies you have to have a capable monitor and a bluetooth
mice/kbd. Adoption will take significant time, but it will come either from
current OSes or a newcomer. Remember how Nokia was the definition of reality
and Apple came with their smartphone and turned the industry around overnight?
Same thing will happen once someone introduces a true universal and responsive
device that can seamlessly adapt to all kinds of use cases. It's just a
question of when.

~~~
untog
> It's just a question of when.

I’m a lot more sceptical. I’m a tech nerd through and through and I can’t
really see why I’d want a truly responsive device like that. The things I do
on both phone and computer (email, messaging, maps, etc) are on the cloud so
it’s easy to switch devices. The stuff that’s more difficult to move (my
coding setup) isn’t something I ever use on mobile. I can see the financial
argument in favour of it but a laptop style case with monitor, keyboard and
trackpad probably wouldn’t ever be that much cheaper than a Chromebook or the
like.

~~~
sto_hristo
Most of the things one does on a laptop - like media consumption, general
browsing, etc. can be done on a smartphone. Why should you be forced to switch
devices if all you want is the convenience of a monitor, keyboard, and a
windowing environment?

It has nothing to do with the financial side of it, it's all about convergence
and finally exposing the full capabilities a such a device. Today's
smartphones run full desktop OS under the hood, but they are just artificially
crippled behind a platform designed to deliver ads.

Whether you will use your smartphone or laptop/pc for a particular task should
be a matter of whether the hardware setup (mobile vs. full desktop) can handle
it or not, not if it's functionally possible at all.

~~~
untog
> Why should you be forced to switch devices if all you want is the
> convenience of a monitor, keyboard, and a windowing environment?

I don’t think you should be forced to but the things you just listed totally
change the way you view and interact with a device, so switching to a
different device isn’t really all that different an experience than docking
the one you’re currently on.

It’s not that it can’t be done, or shouldn’t be done, but to me the benefits
feel very minor. If I’m reading an email on my phone and want to answer on my
laptop it’s already exceedingly easy to do so. Docking a device instead of
using a different one doesn’t really change that equation.

------
trabant00
Option one: I'm growing old and crazy.

Option two: all these features encourage people to rely on their phone to
manage their notifications/conversations instead of keeping their distractions
at a minimum - humanly manageable level.

~~~
1_player
All those screenshots look so busy to me, like there's so much going on in
these people's lives that they struggle to keep up. I want the distraction
device that sits in my pocket to simplify my life, not expose and amplify all
the small interruptions as if they _need_ to be taken care of RIGHT NOW or
else.

"you can pin conversations so they always appear on top of other apps and
screens. Bubbles keep the conversation going—while you stay focused on
whatever else you’re doing. Access the chat anytime or anywhere." — Yo dawg, I
heard you like distractions...

It's not a critique on Android 11 per se. Just a general aimless rant about
the direction we're going with our technological lives.

~~~
glenstein
Yeah, I was wondering if I was going crazy. Even the very first screen was
kinda giving me a headache. It was supposed to be exhibiting elegance and
simplicity.

But I know enough from a decade of using Android to see all kinds of segments
of the interface that have their own special context behaviors and features,
with new menu layers and questions and assumptions that I will need to train
myself to figure out.

------
teekert
"Bubbles keep the conversation going—while you stay focused on whatever else
you’re doing."

Does it get more oxymoronic than this?

~~~
johnasmith
It's an (awkward) user friendly spin on what's ultimately a security update.

Previously, if an app like FB wanted a bubble, they'd draw a screen overlay
via `WindowManager`. That's the same API often misused to draw invisible
layouts over your banking app. Providing a purpose built bubbles API lets
Android close the door on the riskier API.

------
iBotPeaches
Without a major dessert name these releases just feel smaller and not as
noticeable. My Pixel upgraded this morning to 11 and just another day.

------
chrisacky
What's the easiest way to replicate the scroll animation they are doing? (the
big with the big green circle expanding in height)

I've looked at their source, looks to be a <div> which upon scroll updates the
--root-vars (whcih is then used for the transform/scale css ruules)

    
    
        --component-position: 0px;
        --shape-position: 714px;
        --image-height: 712px;
        --offset-image-wrapper: 1248px;
        --offset-middle-image-value: 219.667;
        --scroll-position: 530px;
        --opacity-value: 0.507736;
    

Unfortunately the actual implementation is all hidden in the common.min.js
behind the data-android-component-config

{'small': {'easeShape': 0.005}, 'medium': {'easeShape': 0.002}}

I'm just curious if there's any libraries which handle all the
breakpoints,animations, style updates without needing to reinvite. For
something so face-value trivial, the Google implementation sure has a lot of
edge cases I can see they handle in their "setAnimations_" code.

------
biktor_gj
The biggest announcement here seems to be the "Security updates from Google
Play"

I don't know if that means Samsung doesn't get to decide when you get updates
or if it means "we're delaying security updates from being pushed to AOSP so
you better have Google Services installed if you want your vulnerabilities
patched in a timely fashion"

~~~
arianvanp
If you click on the link it says *for android One devices

which was already the case since ... android 8?

so i'm very confused

~~~
Liquid_Fire
I think what's new is that the updates are delivered via the Google Play store
rather than as a system update, meaning they don't require rebooting the
phone.

------
janvdberg
Does anyone know what efforts Android developers specifically take to address
Android's performance on the multitude of low-end Android devices?

I think (?) most people experience Android on low-end / underpowered devices
and I wonder whether with these upgrades those devices are left behind.

~~~
Aaargh20318
It’s more that buying a high-end Android phone is kind of pointless. As a dev
you want to target the largest possible customer base. In practice this means
developing with a low-end phone and an older OS version in mind. You _could_
have your app adapt to higher-end phones or newer OS versions with things like
optional features, but in reality the market share of those devices is too low
to be worth the investment.

In the end, users with high-end Android phones will mainly be running apps
that are not designed to take full advantage of the capabilities of the
device.

~~~
mastazi
Mmmm I’m not sure if that is always the case. Anecdote: I live in Australia
(where probably the share of higher end devices is higher than other
countries) and I’ve seen a trend where some Android apps that are made for the
Australian market, are only available to higher end devices and listed as
incompatible with everything else. In some extreme cases, they are also
restricted to one single brand i.e. only latest generation, high-end Samsung
models would be supported. I haven’t used Android for more than a year so I’m
really struggling to remember what apps did that, if I remember I will reply
to this comment later.

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fsflover
Discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24410575](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24410575)

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jonny383
Upgraded my Pixel 2 today. Amazingly, battery life seems much better.

------
intricatedetail
If you can't record calls with that OS using 3rd party app then it is a deal
breaker. That's why I am stuck with early 9 and won't upgrade.

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wiradikusuma
"Built-in screen recording. Finally." \-- lol.

Also important: Record with sound from your mic, your device or both.

------
bfrog
From a plethora of choice to a duopoly, spyware vs overpriced fragile
hardware. Lame

------
Mindwipe
This is a pretty weak update.

Fiddling with quite minor things, while breaking the ability to backup your
device even more. Backup is a major black eye in the Android ecosystem for
regular users.

~~~
arkitaip
Android takes care of your contacts, passwords, wifi settings, browser
settings, photos, etc. It requires a Google account but it's astonishing how
quickly you can set up a new phone by simply logging into your Google account.

What's missing is better media management for third party apps like WhatsApp
and Telegram so important photos and videos are backed up while unimportant
ones are ignored and even discarded regularly. Every single family member's
phone I've had to deal with has had this issue ("why is my phone out of
storage when I barely have any apps installed?!" Meanwhile, WhatsApp is
storing 20GB of funny videos).

~~~
creshal
> Android takes care of your contacts

Google contacts.

, passwords,

Google app passwords.

> wifi settings,

Because you can't not use Google's app for it.

> browser settings,

Google Chrome settings.

> photos,

Google photos.

> etc.

(As long as it's in a Google app.)

> it's astonishing how quickly you can set up a new phone by simply logging
> into your Google account.

After ten years or so of using Android I finally bit the bullet and enabled
Google backups to transfer stuff to my new phone a few months back, and I was
astonished at how _fucking nothing_ gets backed up that isn't already in a
Google cloud synced app. What's the point? Every single other app I had to
manually figure out how to transfer and restore, because all Google doing is
to "helpfully" prevent me from backing up my data for "security" reasons.

~~~
jeroenhd
In my experience a lot of apps back up their data to Google when you enable
the Google backup setting. When I transferred to my new phone I had to
reconfigure some security apps, but a lot of settings and data was
automatically transferred from my old phone through the backup mechanism.

What's missing is alternate backup destinations. I'd like to see the option to
backup applications to any cloud provider rather than specifically Google.

