After announcing the date that the public beta would launch, Google decided to drop Android 11 Developer Preview 4 on us.
This, should be the final developer preview before the public beta launches on June 3. So it’s still not ready for most of us to start using it, and that means that you will need to flash it still. Luckily, we have instructions on how to do that here.
The developer preview is now available for Pixel 2, Pixel 2 XL, Pixel 3, Pixel 3 XL, Pixel 3a, Pixel 3a XL, Pixel 4, and Pixel 4 XL.
Developer Preview 4 comes with the May security patch
This should come as no surprise, but Android 11 Developer Preview 4 comes with the latest security patch from Google. Which is the May 6, 2020 patch.
For those interested, it also comes with 20.12.14 version of Google Play Services, and runs on the RPP4.200409.015 build.
Google hasn’t really detailed any of the changes here with Android 11 Developer Preview 4. But it did say that there are some new features to play around with. There are also some bug fixes for those that were running Developer Preview 3, which is always nice.
Keep in mind that if you are not a developer, then you shouldn’t be running this on your daily driver. As it is definitely not ready and does have plenty of bugs and other issues.
Changes to Android 11’s schedule
With the addition of a fourth developer preview, Google has had to make some changes to the Android 11 schedule. Originally, there was slated to be three developer previews and three public betas.
There will still be three public betas, with one coming in June. Then two in July and three coming in August. The third one should be an almost stable version of Android 11, as that is the final update for it before it rolls out to everyone in Q3. Google is still keeping with the Q3 time-frame, which gives Google until the end of September to release Android 11.
Looking back at history, Google released Android 10 in the first week of September. So we could be seeing a post-Labor Day launch for Android 11 this year as we saw last year with Android 10. Of course, only Google knows when they will launch Android 11.
For developers, this does give you an extra month with the final APIs to make sure that your apps are up-to-date for Android 11. And that there’s nothing weird happening with them, once everyone updates to Android 11.