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Android 11 public beta will debut during livestream, Google says

Allison Matyus
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Google plans to announce the public beta for the upcoming Android 11 during a live stream on June 3. 

Android’s latest public beta was supposed to debut at the Google I/O conference on May 12-14, but the coronavirus pandemic forced that event to be canceled. The announcement will instead take place on YouTube beginning at 8 a.m. PT, according to a video spotted by Android Police. 

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The event will include a Q&A portion where people can tweet their Android 11 questions to @AndroidDev using the hashtag #AskAndroid. Android Vice President Dave Burke and Senior Director of Product Management Stephanie Cuthbertson will be on deck to answer those questions. 

Join us for #Android11: The Beta Launch Show!

The beta release on June 3 will include the final SDK and NDK application programming interfaces for developers and open up Google Play publishing for apps targeting Android 11.

Google plans to release beta 2 in July and beta 3 in August, which will include candidate builds for final testing.

Android 11 will include a slew of new features.

One of them is a new “one-time permission,” feature which would be available for apps that only need to access specific data, such as location, one time. 

Android 11 could also possibly have the Scoped Storage feature. The feature would limit the access that apps have to the rest of your device for improved security and better storage management.

Another feature we can expect — initially discovered by XDA Developers — is a new gesture code-named ‘Columbus’ that can be triggered by double-tapping the back of Google Pixel phones. The gesture allows users to easily perform actions such as launching the camera or prompting the Google Assistant by merely tapping the back of their phone twice.

Android 11 most likely won’t be available to most phones until 2021. However, there is also a chance some new Android phones released later on this year will come with Android 11 already installed. 

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Allison Matyus
Allison Matyus
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Allison Matyus is a general news reporter at Digital Trends. She covers any and all tech news, including issues around social…
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