android 12 is here
with the launch of the first Android 12 beta today, we’ve updated the list below with more confirmed features. Read on for all the latest!Android 12 has hit its next major milestone. Google has now released the first beta to the public, giving us access to a fresh new build of the OS. As with the previous developer previews, this is still a very early version of the software, so we wouldn’t advise using it as your daily driver.
We can confirm, though,
that Google is improving and introducing a host of facets in its latest
iteration of Android. Tweaks to media handling and notification support,
improvements to privacy and haptic feedback, and more polished notifications UI
all make the cut. We’re barely brushing the surface here.
If you have a Google Pixel,
you can install Android 12 on
your device right now. It is also available for a select few devices from other OEMs.
If you lack the proper hardware or just want the info, we take a deeper dive
detailing these confirmed Android 12 features and more below. Read on!
Confirmed Android 12 features
These
features are confirmed to land with the stable version of the software.
Whenever Android 12 comes to your smartphone, you can rest assured that these
features will be there (unless, of course, Google changes its mind).
At Google I/O 2021,
the company confirmed that the design of Android 12 will be its biggest visual
overhaul in years. The revamp is part of the next iteration of its design
language, known as Material You.
The idea of Material You is that the users themselves should influence the
design.
With Android 12, the OS
will use a color extraction protocol to lift design elements from your
installed wallpaper. This means that colors across the whole system will change
depending on your home screen background. This will allow an easy and automatic
way for your phone to feel unique to you.
Along with color
extraction, there are numerous new design tweaks, animations, spacing changes,
etc. We have a full roundup of what to expect here.
Unfortunately, only some of the new design elements made it to the first beta —
and color extraction isn’t one of them. Hopefully, we’ll see this in the second
beta, which should land in June.
When you pull down the notification shade, you’re probably used to
seeing round icons at the top of the panel. Well, in Android 12, those round
icons are gone. In their place, we have rounded rectangles. These operate in
the same way as previous Quick Tiles (a tap turns them on or off; a long-press
takes you to the settings page). Now, though, they are larger and can
accommodate more information. Of course, that increase in size means
that fewer tiles can be seen at once. On your first pull of the notification
shade, you’ll only see four tiles, instead of the usual six. As the image above
attests, the Quick Tiles will be themeable with the color extraction protocol.
At I/O 2021, Google announced new privacy features for Android 12 to make
data collection by apps more transparent. The new tools also give users more
granular control over app permissions to help them better manage how and when
apps access their information.
Android 12 introduces a
new Privacy Dashboard that gives users a detailed view of how apps access their
information. When you open it up, you’ll see a summary dashboard that shows you
an overview of how many apps accessed your location, camera, and microphone in
the past 24 hours.
Within the new Privacy
Dashboard on Android 12, users will get to access an option to tweak app
permissions. You’ll see a Manage Permissions setting on the timeline view page
from where you’ll be able to revoke a particular permission from an app. here
are a whole bunch of changes on the way in addition to the dashboard. For a
full rundown of all the new privacy-centric features, check out our roundup here. Android 12’s notification system will be
redesigned to improve aesthetics, usability, and functionality. Google’s
tweaking the drawer and controls and freshening up transitions and animations.
Responsiveness is also
being targeted. Android 12 will prompt developers to ditch “trampolines” —
middle-man broadcast receivers or services — that bounce users from the
notification to the app. In Android 12, Google wants notification taps to take
users directly to the app itself. The company’s also “delaying the display of
some foreground service notifications by up to 10 seconds,” which will give
short tasks a brief window to complete before pinging the user.
In stock Android 11, if you want to share your current Wi-Fi
connection with someone, you can create a QR code easily. However, in Android
12, you can avoid the barcode scanning and just hit the “Nearby” button you see
underneath the QR code in the image above. That will use Android’s Nearby Share feature to transmit the Wi-Fi credentials to
whomever you like.
While scanning the QR code is pretty easy, this new feature allows
you to share the connection info with multiple people without handing your
phone around for everyone to scan. That’s definitely more convenient!
his feature appeared in the first DP as a hidden item but didn’t
make its official debut until the second DP. It operates much as the one-handed
mode does in iOS. First, you activate the feature within Android settings, and
then you swipe down anywhere at the bottom of the display. Doing so brings the
top half-or-so of the display downwards, allowing you to better reach any
buttons, icons, or other features there.
Since this is easily found
within Settings, it seems very likely it will make it to the stable launch.
However, it’s early days yet so Google could change its mind.
