Google has announced that the first Android 11 Public Beta will be revealed at an online event on June 3. This is a slight setback as according to a previous timeline shared by Google the first beta was expected to be released next week. Instead of that, Google has announced an unexpected Android 11 Developer Preview 4. Also, important to know is that Google claims that this won’t affect the final release of Android 11 that’s expected to roll out in Q3 later this year.
Since Google I/O (has been cancelled this year, Google is organizing a waggishly-named “Beta Launch Show” that’ll see the Mountain View-based giant live stream the announcement of the next major iteration of Android 11 (I kinda miss the confectionery-based naming scheme). The event will be hosted by Dave Burke, VP Engineering of Android and will be followed by a live QnA session where questions can be tweeted out using the #AskAndroid hashtag.
Alongside the first Android 11 Beta, Google will also release the final SDK and NDK APIs and open up Google Play publishing for applications targeting Android 11.
Taking into consideration the recent developments, Google also shared an updated Beta timeline of Android 11. As mentioned above, Google has announced a Developer Preview 4 that’s already available for the Google Pixel 2/2 XL, the Pixel 3/3 XL, the Pixel 3a/3a XL, and the Pixel 4/4 XL. If you’re already on a DP build, you could also install the update via an OTA.
Now that the first Beta has been moved to June, the following Betas have also been rescheduled. Android 11 Beta 2 is aiming for a July release and Google is aiming to reach Platform Stability with this release. The last and the final beta, Android 11 Beta 3, is expected to be released in August and will include release candidate builds (internal builds to check for any critical problems that may have gone unnoticed) for final testing.
If you were looking to test out the Public Beta on your Google Pixel, you’ll have to wait an additional month.