
Android 11 beta is available now - andraskindler
https://blog.google/products/android/android-11-beta/
======
louib
In my opinion the highlight here is the addition of the "Only this time"
option when granting permissions to an app. I'm wondering though if this new
privacy feature is only available for the 3 permission types listed in the
post.

> With one-time permissions you can grant apps access to your microphone,
> camera or location, just that one time. The next time the app needs access
> to these sensors, it will have to ask you for permission again.

~~~
julesallen
Have you tried Bouncer?
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samruston....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samruston.permission)

------
boromi
Unfortunately I'll never be able to receive this update on my Samsung S9,
since they aren't providing any further Android updates...

~~~
ta17711771
They don't do verified boot anyway.

Google hardware like Pixels with custom ROMs (GrapheneOS anyone?) are the
move.

------
godelski
But will my weather always show in the clock now instead of randomly? (The "At
a glance that's on the homescreen, shows the date, weather, upcoming events
etc. Frequently it just shows the date for me and drops weather info)

And do we really need bubbles? Do people actually like those? I always found
that annoying.

~~~
ehsankia
Android is customizable, you can put any weather widget you want, or
completely swap the launcher too.

As for bubbles, I think they're also optional, though if it can merge
conversations across multiple different apps seamlessly, I'm all for it.

~~~
godelski
> Android is customizable, you can put any weather widget you want, or
> completely swap the launcher too.

I'm making a point that the default one ("At a glance") has weird behavior. If
you happen to know one that has the same functionality and isn't buggy, I'll
switch it out. I just want it to default be date + weather and only change
when I have a calendar event or flight. But it currently seems that whenever I
want to actually know the weather that it just shows the date while its usual
default state is date + weather.

------
shock
> To make communication easier and simpler on your phone, Android 11 will move
> all of your conversations across multiple messaging apps to a dedicated
> space in the notification section.

That makes me think of Unity's messaging menu. Everything old is new again, I
suppose.

------
0xdeadb00f
Every single android version revamps the notification UI.

I'm not complaining, this one _looks_ nice. But why change it every goddamn
update? It's like one step forward, one step back.

~~~
logicprog
I'll admit, I don't use Android, but that Notification Center looks pretty
similar to the one that I saw previously. Yeah, it's been changed slightly,
but the whole thing hasn't been switched around. It looks like they've added
features though.

Honestly, I'd rather they keep refining it, at whatever step size they have
to, until they get it perfect, instead of stopping with something that's "good
enough."

------
mmastrac
Been seeing a few app crashes on the Android 11 betas. Hopefully they've been
addressing API bustage. Unfortunately the Android bug tracker seems to be a
black hole for reports.

~~~
bleah1000
Here's the dirty little secret of app crashes on Android: many of these apps
use some pretty horrid drm code that will only run on known versions of
Android. So every new version of Android, you get a crash because it doesn't
recognize the new version until the drm is updated.

If this is a game that's crashing on start-up, I would guess 90% of the time
the app is the problem.

~~~
mmastrac
These are normal apps, unfortunately, crashing at or near startup. I believe
that Google made some changes to JNI in Android 11 and most of the crashes are
in native code.

~~~
bleah1000
I have never seen anything but a native crash for drm code issues. I would be
willing to bet some type of drm is still the problem here.

~~~
mmastrac
Unfortunately based on some quick analysis it looks like there _was_ a change
in JNI - previously JNI method handles were pointer-like and now they are
opaque integers. Definitely not DRM in this case.

Apps crash in the default mode. Hacking the device so that SetJniType is
called with kPointer makes it all work.

[https://android.googlesource.com/platform/art/+/master/runti...](https://android.googlesource.com/platform/art/+/master/runtime/runtime.h#924)

------
SubiculumCode
Its almost as if each Android version is there to further tighten Google's
monopolistic screws.

------
tw04
>More privacy improvements

But still no encrypted chat. It's cute watching the security theater out of
Google. Security to them means "only WE get access to your data, and ALL of
your data".

~~~
lern_too_spel
Encrypted chat is an app, not an OS API.

~~~
londons_explore
I mean it could be part of the OS. It would be kind of cool if your OS could
have an API to encrypt private user data with some key that only the other
persons OS can decode.

Chat apps could then delegate security to the OS, rather than having to trust
that the app developer has a security team that knows what they're doing.

You could even take it one step further and have the plaintext of the users
messages secret from the app - the OS would draw them direct to the screen. A
bit like opaque cross-origin data in webpages is secret from JavaScript on the
page.

~~~
Novukus
Why would you trust _Google_ with that though?

~~~
ta17711771
Right. Implementation of encryption is the easiest part to fuck up and/or
backdoor.

