Last month, Google pulled the trigger and released the first Developer Preview build of Android 11 a little bit earlier than much of us anticipated. While it was an exciting prospect to be on the very bleeding edge, it was a bit of a mixed bag more than anything. Shortly after, Google released another Developer Preview build, ironing out some of the bugs reported in the initial release. This indeed is the ultimate gift to entertain all of the geeky owners of the Pixel 4, 3a, 3 and 2 devices during their quarantine (may the Pixel 1 rest in peace). And despite Essential pulling the plug on the PH-1, declaring no further support beyond the February security update, it’s fair to say Essential’s engineers were a bit too stubborn to let it go, treating their geeky users with the biggest surprise yet: Android 11 support. Here is a simple procedure to install the latest Developer Preview build of Android 11 on the legendary Essential PH-1.
Voila! You have now successfully installed Android R DP2! Now you can use your Essential phone as your daily driver …sort of. Unfortunately, there are a few quirks to be wary of. For starters, the in-built phone app is a bit buggy. The modem works just fine, but because of the buggy default Dialer app, you won’t be able to answer or reject phone calls — the in-call UI will not show up, neither in an unintrusive notification or in the usual fullscreen layout. Here is what to do to fix that.
So far, this was the only major issue I had that stood in the way of using my Essential phone as my daily driver. Once that was sorted, I was back in business and cracked on restoring my stuff. Until I noticed these ugly square-shaped icons in my app drawer. Fortunately, there is a way to change the icon shape via adb to either squircle, teardrop or rounded rectangle (square icons with rounded corners instead of the default sharp-edged square shape). Here’s how to save your eyes from the ugly sight of these square icons.
Not only could you switch icon shapes via ADB on Android 11, but you could switch the accent colors too! Instead of the lame green accent color that is set by default, here is how to change the accent colors to orchid, black, green, ocean, purple and space.
Another feature that is missing from the Android 11 DP2 GSI we have just flashed is the new gestural navigation introduced in Android 10. Fortunately, with the help of some adb commands, you can enable and disable the navigation gestures at will.
Unfortunately, you cannot customize the back gesture’s sensitivity as far as I am concerned. Also, it appears that the two-button navigation option is no longer supported. Perhaps Google will drop it with Android 11 onwards?
While these mods might look a bit trivial to most people, they were more of a necessity to me, especially the ability to switch to gestural navigation. Only then did it feel more of a complete experience to use my Essential phone as my daily driver while running Android 11 …somewhat. While the overall experience looks unscathed at first, a few niggles here and there are worth mentioning, which could potentially be a deal-breaker to some.
To begin with, there are no signs of any automatic brightness control, meaning that the brightness level can only be changed manually by adjusting the brightness slider yourself in the Quick Settings menu. Speaking of which, there seems to be no support for Night Light as well, though there is a Grayscale tile in the Quick Settings menu. Also, it seems that the default shape of the notch is not supported, which means the notch will be cutting through the contents of the app itself up top, instead of cutting through a slightly taller status bar. To mitigate this issue, you need to go to the Developer Options in the Settings app, search for the Display cutout menu and select the “Tall cutout” option. This will extend the status bar vertically to the same vertical distance of the front camera notch, though it will add two slanted black bars next to the front-facing camera, resembling the same shape roughly as the Pixel 3 XL’s infamous bathtub notch, which might be a bit too hideous to bear for some.
On the topic of missing features, you cannot swipe on the fingerprint sensor on the back to slide down the notifications panel as well. Fortunately, you can swipe down on your home screen with your thumb to access the notifications panel — a sigh of relief. You can’t, however, swipe left to access your Google News Feed. Moving on, photos taken with the default camera app are not saved on your phone’s storage. This issue can be mitigated by installing any other camera apps — I sideloaded an APK file of the latest Gcam 7.3, works just fine with no major issues. Last but not least, there seems to be no Ambient Display support, which means you will have to rely on the tiny LED indicator at the top to know whether there are any new notifications.
If you can make peace with the mentioned quirks, then you will enjoy running Android 11 on your Essential phone as your daily driver. Performance is great for the most part, with only a couple of stutters every now and then, as with the case of basically any GSI from my experience. The same can be said about the battery life. I have been getting around 5-6 hours of screen-on time every charge cycle for the past couple of days. Of my usual suite of social media apps, there are no compatibility issues so far. And of course, you get to use that nifty screen recorder option present in the Quick Settings tiles that Google has teased us every since the Android 10 Developer Preview builds! It’s nothing fancy, with options only to show touches and enable recording audio from the microphone. But hey, it works just fine! Neat!
Hopefully, Google will surprise us with another early release of the next Developer Preview build and maybe fix some of the reported bugs. That will be the ultimate treat to all of the tech-enthusiasts in self-isolation out there. Are there any other bugs you have come across after installing Android 11 on your phone? What is your most favorite feature of Android 11 so far? Let us know in the comments section down below!
Via: Reddit, XDA-Developers Forums