 Android 11 is here, sort of. Not really, it's only the first developer preview and Google has released it even earlier than they usually do. So the few big changes that are here are still a little janky, but that jankiness can tell us what to expect from the future of Android. So we installed Android 11 on our Pixel 4 XL, so you don't have to. Seriously, don't get this yet. But what you should get is today's sponsor, Ting. Why pay for things you don't need or even use? With a phone plan from Ting, you only pay for what you use. So check it out at the link below to find out how much you can save. So as usual, this Android developer preview can only be installed on Pixel devices and a couple of other models, essential being one, rest in pieces. It requires a bit of know-how in order to flash the OS and has a bunch of glitches. As we said a minute ago, if you're not actually a developer, you should not install this on your personal device unless you're looking to make your phone simultaneously more interesting and less usable. Okay, so let's dive in. Probably the most noticeable end user facing feature in this release is the built-in screen recorder. It's pretty bare bones with no options for anything like frame rate or resolution, but hey, it's finally there. Google teased us by adding this feature to the developer preview of Android 10 and then yanking it from the final release. But while it was hidden in the developer options last year, this time around, it's right there in the quick settings, which indicates we'll probably see it in the version that ships. A man can dream. Next up is Bubbles, or as most people know them, basically the Facebook Messenger chat heads. This was another feature found in the Android 10 developer options. In Android 11, it's properly baked in. Long pressing on any message notification will give you the option to pop it out as an always on top bubble. And if you find even having that option to be offensive, you can disable Bubbles for specific apps. Right now there's a glitch where tapping the bubble will open the whole app, which I'm pretty sure isn't supposed to happen, but I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to download these developer previews either, so. Now you might also notice that messages are now grouped together in the notification panel under conversations. So you don't have to scroll through a million celebrity gossip notifications before you find your friend's text. Neat. I don't have those on my phone. I don't have celebrities. Now for some smaller features. We finally got a proper dark mode. Google calls it dark theme in Android 10. And now like do not disturb, nightlight, and the focus mode, you can schedule it to turn on and off at certain times to correspond with when you're feeling more edgy. Pinning items to the share menu makes a return from freaking Android nougat. Bluetooth will stay on if you have something like headphones connected when you turn on airplane mode. And the Pixel 4 specifically has another motion sense gesture tapping the air above your phone will pause and play music, making that feature about 1.65% more useful. There's a bunch more tiny changes, but before we get to that, I want to talk about what is useful in this release because it's really the more under the hood stuff. In Android 10, we got the option to let an app use a certain permission like location access or audio recording all the time, none of the time, or only when we were using it. And in Android 11, you can grant access to an app only this time for greater privacy control. If you deny an app a certain permission twice, it will stop asking you. Not only that, but background location permissions, which let an app grab your location anytime it wants, will basically be off for all apps, even Google Maps, unless the user specifically goes into settings and enables it. There's some more cool under the hood stuff. 12 new modules are being added to project mainline. That's Google's initiative for streamlining Android updates by kind of breaking the OS into chunks that can be individually updated through the Play Store instead of making people wait for the big giant system update to get to their phone. More modules means more OS elements that can be updated that way. So you always want more modules. But things are a bit less clear when it comes to another Android 11 change, the arrival of scoped storage. This is less of a new feature and more of a fundamental restructuring of the way Android handles its entire file system. Basically, each app has its own isolated storage. Instead of every app having access to every part of your phone, there would be a few common directories that every app could access, like the music, photos, and downloads folders. Although you could grant apps like file explorers access to the whole system. This would be a huge step forward for security and privacy as it means one bad app couldn't snoop around your whole system and message your secret cookie recipe to the whole office. Secret cookie recipe? What? It's nudes. I'm talking about nudes. The problem is, some developers don't seem super down with the idea, partially because A, it requires a bunch of work to modify their apps to work with the new system. And B, Google has chosen an API called Storage Access Framework or SAF that's way slower at reading and writing files than the existing API. Google basically gave devs a warning with Android 10 that they'd be making the change. And there's some indication that with some optimizations, SAF's performance impact isn't so horrible in Android 11. So hopefully either devs suck it up or Google capitulates and chooses a different API. And I'm sorry, developers. It's probably gonna be the first one. But don't be sad because now we're going to fly through the rest of the tiny things hidden in the developer preview. That's fun. First off, swiping between home screens has a little jiggle now. What is this? Android Jello? Sorry. There's a hidden page for notification history. So we might get the ability to see what notification we just accidentally swiped away. That would be very welcome. A hidden command can put media playback controls into the quick settings menu instead of in a notification, which would make both the media controls and the notifications that are usually beneath it slightly easier to access. In the developer options, there's a toggle to display a FRAPS style refresh rate indicator. But on the Pixel 4, it only really switches between 60 and 90. So hopefully that gets more granular. There's a settings page for battery share, indicating the Pixel 5 might be able to charge other devices like Samsung's wireless power share. Cool. And you can tell what Bluetooth codec your wireless headphones or speaker is using in the developer options. I like apatix. And then there are some features hidden in the code that other people on the web were able to activate, but I couldn't because I'm just a simple boy. You might be able to customize a double tap on the back of Pixel phones to launch a particular app. You might be able to split the notifications and quick settings menus so you can swipe on the left or right side to only call down one or the other. And you might be able to choose specific colors for your quick settings icons so you can differentiate them more easily. Oh wait, you can definitely do that because I did it with some ADB commands. Get on my level. But again, all of those features may or may not make it to the final release of Android 11 when it launches, probably with the Pixel 5 this fall. Google just throws us some crumbs and we have to either eat them or buy a non-Pixel phone and install a launcher and get all of these features through third-party apps anyway. So really, either way, you can get what you want. And if what you wanna do is mask your IP and encrypt traffic to and from your device, you want private internet access. They have reliable service with over 3000 servers in 30 countries. There's no bandwidth caps and with configurable encryption and an internet kill switch, you are in control of your connection. When combined with private browsing, it can even make websites think you're in a different country. Connect up to five devices at once with clients for Windows, Mac OS, Android, iOS and Linux and their Mace feature blocks requests, known malware and tracking domains altogether. So it's awesome. Check it out today at the link below. Hey, thanks for watching guys. If you're looking for something else to watch now, go watch the video where we installed Android on a Nintendo Switch. That's a blow your mind dude. Ha ha. Elite gaming controller noodles ingredients