Should You Use Android 11 Beta as Your Daily Driver?

I’m already seeing plenty of curious Pixel owners asking if they should boot up and run the first public beta for Android 11 as their daily driver. It’s a fantastic and warranted question, and while you’d think that a public beta is a safe thing to run as a daily OS, I’m here to tell you that you might as well wait and hold off on flashing Android 11.

Video: What’s new in Android 11 beta!

I hate to be the one to tell you, but Google is not joking when they call this a beta. Heck, I might even still label this as an alpha, since the majority of features the Android team highlighted yesterday when it was unveiled don’t work.

Here’s a few things not working properly:

• Bubbles –  One of the premier Android 11 beta features, Bubbles are not working properly. Whether this is due to developers needing to enable them or something with updates, they aren’t working properly. The only app currently working with Bubbles is Facebook Messenger.
• Google Pay –  Not a feature exclusive to Android 11, but a feature needed for many when it comes to “daily driver,” Google Pay does not work on “experimental” software.
• Updated Media Controls –  Yet another feature highlighted by Google, it can work properly if enabled via the Developer Settings menu. Our hope was that it’d work without having to dig through settings, but this is a beta after all.
• It’s simply not stable – Kellen has had more issues than me in this department, but he is running into serious stability problems when running certain apps. For example, his phone froze while using Chrome, as well as when viewing a photo. These types of problems aren’t what you want on a daily driver.

If you have a Pixel as a secondary phone or something like that, then by all means, flash Android 11 and have some fun. If you only use one phone and need your Pixel to be reliable, I wouldn’t recommend it right now. It’s just not worth it. Maybe if you could at least test some of Google’s sweet new Android 11 features it’d be fun, but they aren’t even working.

TL;DR version: Nope, don’t flash the Android 11 beta to your Pixel.