Android 11 Developer Preview Shows Off New 5G APIs, Security Hardening, HDMI Low-Latency

Google has made their first public developer preview release of the forthcoming Android 11.

Android 11 will be formally out in the months ahead but before that a series of developer preview releases will be offered. With today's Android 11 Developer Preview 1 are currently system images for the Google Pixel 2/3/3a/4 devices.

Android 11 is adding new APIs designed to enhance the 5G connectivity experience, support for new screen types, updates to their Neural Networks API, privacy and security hardening additions, support for animated drawables in the HEIF image format, support for image encode/decode using native code, support for low-latency video decoding to benefit the likes of their own Stadia cloud gaming platform, and HDMI low-latency mode support. The HDMI low-latency mode is for requesting the specialized mode on external devices for having Smart TVs disable any graphics post-processing effects in order to minimize latency.

More details on this first developer preview of Google's Android 11 via the Android-Developers Blog.