Whenever a new version of Android arrives, like we got with Android 11 today, you all start asking about how and when you can get it on your Pixel phones. With Android 11, since Google has delivered it so damn early, they have made it clear that the first Developer Preview is only meant for developers. That means no Android Beta just yet.
That also means you can’t easily load this up on your Pixel 2, Pixel 3, Pixel 3a, or Pixel 4 without a bit of work in adb and a command prompt. If you want to get in on Android 11 right now, you need to flash a factory image or OTA file. You probably shouldn’t.
So when can you get the update to Android 11 through the Android Beta Program? Probably in May. At least, that’s what Google’s timeline for Android 11 spells out.
The timeline above was posted by Google today and it shows Developer Previews running from today through April as the orange dots. We can then see that “Beta Releases” show up as blue dots starting in May and running through to the final release some time in Q3. May is Google I/O and would make a lot of sense for the first beta, it’s just that we had betas earlier last year with Android 10.
For now, Google has officially said that Android Beta enrollments will kick off in the “next several weeks.” Did they really mean May?
// Android 11 Developer Preview
This post was last modified on February 19, 2020 2:40 pm