Theta Android News: Whoops! Unreleased Android 11 beta is showing up on some Pixel phones.

Monday, June 1, 2020

Whoops! Unreleased Android 11 beta is showing up on some Pixel phones.

The Android 11 beta update is already out in the wild as at least two people have already received it as an OTA notification.
The first beta of Android 11 currently has no official launch date, making this very small rollout seem like an accident.

Update: XDA's Mishaal Rahman has been tweeting out a handful of new features in the Android 11 beta. We'll list them below.

Three new icon shapes:

Screenshots of these 3 icon shapes pic.twitter.com/lU4kDkOZcV

— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) June 1, 2020

Revamped power menu and settings:

This is the new "power menu" settings in Android 11. This will control the cards & passes and Controls feature that I tweeted about earlier today. pic.twitter.com/EdHNpXmwiR

— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) June 1, 2020

New media controls in the quick settings (called "media resumption"):

Remember the wild media player in Quick Settings experiment we found in DP1? https://t.co/s01QQNmdYv

It's live in Beta 1 as a Developer Option called "media resumption." pic.twitter.com/CKlbG7wYNh

— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) June 1, 2020

New options to control app suggestions in the Pixel Launcher:

New options to control app suggestions in the Pixel Launcher pic.twitter.com/YI2RI6syzX

— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) June 1, 2020

New submenu for bubble notifications:

New submenu for enabling Bubble notifications. Settings > Apps & Notifications > Notifications > Bubbles. pic.twitter.com/R1cla9oPMm

— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) June 1, 2020

Original article: We expected the first Android 11 beta to launch officially on Wednesday. However, Google postponed the event over the weekend. Although it didn't say as much, it's very likely the date change is due to the ongoing protests around the United States related to the death of George Floyd. Since Google did not issue a new date, we are currently in the dark as to when the first beta of Android 11 will actually land.

However, Mishaal Rahman of XDA Developers posted to Twitter today saying that he's heard from two tipsters that the Android 11 beta is already trickling out. Both tipsters apparently own Google Pixel 4 XL smartphones and saw an OTA update. In other words, these aren't manual downloads they found online — the only realistic explanation is that Google pushed them out.

Check out the OTA notification for Android 11 beta below.

Android 11 Beta Leak Twitter

Source: Twitter

Unfortunately, there's no changelog attached to this so we can't see what differences there might be from the fourth Android 11 developer preview and the new Android 11 beta. However, these two users will presumably follow through with the update, and changes could be forthcoming. We'll keep an eye on Twitter.

In the grand scheme of things, this isn't too big of a deal. Google will very likely launch the Android 11 beta program soon — just not on Wednesday. Still, without a firm release date, it's anyone's guess as to when we might actually see it land officially.

We reached out to Google for a comment on what's happening here, but we didn't hear back before publishing. We will update this article should the company deliver us a statement.