when I first previewed the new features inside Android 11, I said that Android is amature operating system.
What that means is that unlesssome designer inside Google has a wild-eyed harebrained idea, things just aren't goingto radically change that much in a mature OS. Instead, the updates aregonna be about cleaning up some bugs or fixing somesecurity and privacy issues or adding new features. But the thing about adding new features is that if you don't do it right, you end up just overwhelming the user.
It all becomes this weird slurry of things that you just completely ignore. I mean, look at every single Samsung phone from like the Galaxy S3 to the Galaxy S8 if you want a good example of that. If you don't wanna bearyour user in check boxes, what you have to do is manage complexity. And that is the real job ofa mature operating system, managing complexity.
So for this review of Android 11, the big question is whetheror not Google pulled that off. And my answer is barely,and I think I can explain why I point at thisthing that a lot of us do when we get new software, it's the very first thingthat I do after a big update, it's that I go to the settings. I poke around and see what'snew inside the settings because often a lot of the new features, they're just sitting inthere waiting to be toggled.
It really is a pretty good way to learn what you can do in new software. It's like a site map, butfor operating systems. So, all right, let's talk about the newfeatures in Android 11, but through the settings app. I promise this will be fun, no, really. I mean, look, if you'rewatching a review of Android 11, you are almost as big a nerd as I am, so don't act like you're too good to look at the settings app with me.
So the first setting Iwanna look at is bubbles. So you got to Apps Notifications,Notifications, Bubbles, and you make sure it's turned on. But the thing to actually payattention to is what happens when you get a notificationfrom a chat app like Android Messages orFacebook Messenger or whatever. Firstly, they appear in the section at the top of your notificationscalled Conversations. And this section is awesome. It means that you don't miss chats in the mix of all of theother notifications you get from all those other appsyou don't care about.
And it also means you can dostuff like mute notifications on a given chat thread becauseit's really, really busy, but that doesn't mean you're gonna miss it even though it's muted 'cause it's still sitting at the topof your notifications. I really love it. Anyway, bubbles, if youlook at the notification, you're gonna see a little box in the lower right-handcorner of the notification.
There's one version ofit that has an arrow pointing to a circle,that's to turn bubbles on, or an arrow pointing away from a circle to the turn bubbles off. I think this icon is confusing and weird, but I guess the squarerepresents a notification and the circle is a bubble. Anyway, you tap it to toggle bubble mode on or off for any given conversation. Now, when you bubble a conversation, it turns into this littlecircle that you could put anywhere on the screen,and then you tap on it.
It opens up the chat threadand then you can chat. And you can intermix services. So you could have a stackof three or four or five different chat appsall in a single bubble, and tap and toggle between them. And this is great because it lets you have a conversation withsomebody going for a while, really quick, whileyou're doing other stuff. And then you can just toss the thing away when you're done chattingwith that person. Now, I know the firsttime you see bubbles, it's weird to have thisthing pop up on your screen. You're probably gonna want to turn it off, but honestly, give 'em a shot. I ended up liking bubblesway more than I expected to. Okay, as long as we're talkingabout the notification shade, there is another new thing up here.
Your media controls areno longer interspersed throughout the top of your notifications. They're up there with your quick settings. That's just how it works now. But there is one settingthat you can check. So you go to Sound, Media, Hide Player. and you can turn this off. And I have it turned off. Disabling it means thatyour media controls will stick around for awhile, even if you pause them. It creates some extra space in the shade, but it's worth it becausethen you can go there and play paused stuff more quickly. And the media player itself, it's the same buttons as before, but if you've played somethingfrom a few different apps, say Spotify and then YouTubeand then Pocket Casts, instead of having all those stacked up in your notifications one after the other, now you swipe between themhorizontally in this new section.
And so that's really neat. Also, don't miss the output button inside this new media section, which lets you selectwhere the audio is going. It would be pretty niceif this output things, some more things than, you know, just basically Bluetooth things, but maybe that's something forthe next version of Android. Okay, the next new bigfeature in Android 11 is Google's new Power Menu, which combines three kind of random things under a long press of the power button. So you've got Power controls, Google Pay, and then Smart Home controls.
Google says this is likeyour phone's interface to the real physical world, which sure. This is where I think Google'sattempt to manage complexity is starting to get a little strained. So for example, let's say you want to find the settings for this Power Menu. So you go to the settings app, which by itself seems like not too bad. I like that important controls like Wi-Fi or Bluetoothare right at the top.
But anyway, where are the power controls? Well, they're under System, Gestures. Gestures? I mean, I know that they're there because Google put allof its custom controls underneath Gestures'cause those used to be actual gestures for the way that you'd control custom Google things, but nobody else knows that. It's a button, it's nota gesture, what the heck? But honestly, I'm not that angry about it. I mean, I will point out that if you wanna find something in settings, the easy thing to do is just go to the top and type in the thing you're searching for and it'll pop up.
But I do wish that Google'd dothis thing that Samsung does where at the bottom ofsome of its settings pages, it tells you that if you'relooking for something else that you thought shouldbe in that setting page, it's over in some other spot. Like I would always expectthe Always On Display to be under the displaysettings, but it's not. It's actually under the lock screen and Samsung gets that that's confusing. And so they give you a littleshortcut at the bottom. But let's just assume you found your way somehow to the power settings. You get there and this is where you can toggle different parts of the Power Menu. And even though I think that metaphor for what the Power Menurepresents is weird, I love it.
I do think it's superconvenient to have access to these smart home controls so quickly. And I have found myself usingthis Power Menu all the time. So look, I'm not gonna goover every single feature in Android 11 in this video. I'm not gonna talk about howscreen recording finally works, how screenshots look just likethey do on the iPhone now, or, you know, actually this one's nice. Android is finally cracking down on apps that want backgroundpermission all of the time.
Pretty much everything isgetting moved to only have location permission when the app is open. And that's how it should be. All in all, all the other features that I'm not getting to here, that's all pretty good stuff. At this point, I should really just call out the elephant in the room. We're mainly talkingabout Pixel phones here. Although this year, a couple others are getting it right away, which is great. Other Android phones are gonnaget Android 11 at some point. Now, speed on updates has gotten better over the last couple of years,but it's still not great. And even when the Android updates do come, it's hard to predict if everything is going to work the same.
So for example, mostAndroid phones still have the three buttons at the bottom, and some little swipey swipey controls that Google tried to get everybody to switch to a couple of versions ago. Here's another example. That Power Button Menu,on most Samsung phones, long-pressing the powerbutton now takes you to Bixby, but Google wants the power button to take you to that new Power Menu.
So is Samsung gonna switch to that or not? And when they do, arethey gonna use Google Home to power the smart homecontrols like the Pixel does, and Google Pay like the Pixel does? No, they're not. They're gonna wanna useSmartThings for home control and Samsung Pay forpaying inside that menu. And it's that kind of complexity that I don't know ifGoogle knows how to manage.
I'm not talking about the complexity within Android 11 itself. I'm talking about complexity across different versions of Android 11, Samsungs, and Microsofts, and LGs, and Googles, and whoever else. I'm starting to worry that we're gonna have to start saying the F word again. Fragmentation, that's the F word, but what word were you thinking? Honestly, though, I really do hate ending every single Android review with a gripe about how only Pixels get it first, and everybody else is a little bit later. So I'm not kidding when I say that I think that update timing is getting better.
It's never gonna be day and date as good as the way the iPhone does it, but we are a long waysfrom the battle days when you would wait sixmonths to a year to never for Android updates. Plus companies like Samsungand OnePlus are committing to three years of updatesand that really matters. So that's my review of Android 11. It has a bunch of new features that are just barely contained into something that feels comprehensible. I do think it's a fine update, but you know what I want for Android 12? Well, I'll tell you what I want. I want Android to be betteron foldables and tablets. Samsung and Microsoft are doing two totally different things. And Android is still messy on Chrome OS.
You know, phones, I thinkthey've got enough features to last us for a while. It is time to finally fixAndroid on the big screens, and also to do a betterjob helping developers navigate all of these newform factors that are coming, because Google, if you don't do that soon, whew, F word. Hey everybody, thank youso much for watching, and am I, am I all on this bubble thing? I really like the bubbles. Let me know what you thinkof 'em down in the comments, and you know what else? Wear a mask, you should wear a mask.
