I am pretty cool about updates Android, because I often find them useless, and I actively promote my ideas in the public space. But this does not mean at all that my position is unshakable; rather, on the contrary, I am always happy when someone succeeds in convincing me. Oddly enough, but Google, which last week released the first test build Android 11, succeeded. Now I am sharing with you why the developers of the search giant were able to interest me, that I readily decided to abandon my own update dissidence.
Android 11 is already in beta testing, but only Pixel smartphone owners can download it
Despite the fact that now only the first stage of beta testing is underway Android 11, and the update obviously does not contain even half of all the planned innovations, what is already there was enough to convince me to update among the first .
How to change your card in Google Pay
I have a long history of using contactless payment tools and started with Apple Pay. Even then, this service seemed to me to be perfect, because, firstly, it allowed not to carry a wallet full of cards, secondly, it ensured the protection of payment data without transferring even the card mask to the seller, and, thirdly, it worked completely flawlessly. However, over time, I had to switch to Google Pay, and I realized that these two services are as different from each other as heaven and earth. Google Pay not only experienced intermittent payment failures, but was also too primitive to use.
Hot swappable maps on Google Play is something I've been missing for years
But if the possibility of paying for three purchases without confirming transactions with biometrics, in principle, can be attributed to convenience, then the lack of the possibility of hot swapping cards before payment, as is done in Apple Pay, was not. That is, in fact, I not only could not change the payment card, but also provide the cashier with a discount card of the store. To do this, I had to unlock my smartphone, go to the Google Pay application and look for virtual 'plastic' there.
But, fortunately, it finally dawned on Google that this was not the case, and it decided to implement in Google Pay a tool for hot swapping cards, selecting tickets and boarding passes right on the lock screen. If only it would have occurred to them that it would be much more logical to make not a horizontal carousel, but a vertical one. But thanks for that.
What is Scoped Storage
I consider myself a responsible user Android. Despite the fact that I am not engaged in flashing and unlocking bootloaders, I perfectly understand how to behave in order not to become a victim of hackers or malicious applications. Nevertheless, sometimes even people like me accidentally install a program that should not have been installed better, because even if it cannot establish surveillance on you, it is possible that it will not collect confidential data like SMS messages, contact list and call data.
To prevent this, Google has added a Scoped Storage mechanism to Android 11, which divides the built-in memory of a smartphone into many independent cells. As a result of installing the application, it occupies its own cell and cannot leave its limits, that is, in fact, it does not have the ability to claim data processed by other software.
It sounds pretty weird, but Android didn't have it before. No, of course, Google planned to implement Scoped Storage a year ago, but the developers asked her to postpone the integration of the new mechanism in order to give them time to optimize their applications. Otherwise, we could get half working versions of familiar programs, which, although safe, is not very useful from a functional point of view. Let's hope Google doesn't postpone Scoped Storage again this time.
Incoming notification history at Android
Notification history will keep you from missing important messages, even if you've accidentally closed them
Probably, everyone has had a situation when a random swipe across the screen covered the not yet read notification. As a result, the only way to read its contents was to manually browse all messengers and applications for important mailing, but often the efforts made were not enough and the untimely remote notification remained a secret.
Undoubtedly, Google Play has a lot of special utilities that save the history of notifications, allowing you to read them, even if it was a message in the messenger that the sender had already deleted before you read it. But in Android 11, a native tool will appear that stores alerts in memory.
In my opinion, this is generally one of the most useful innovations of the update, because I do not want to install third-party applications to save notifications, and situations when I accidentally close them happen quite often.
It is very difficult to surprise me with the innovations of updates, because most of them, as a rule, either existed in the form of standalone applications on Google Play before, or will certainly appear in the future. Therefore, when my next smartphone did not receive the new version Android, I was not too upset. But sometimes there are functions that are simply impossible to implement through third-party software, such as the ability to hot swap cards in Google Play or Scoped Storage. So I will install Android 11 as soon as it comes out.