Top 5 symptoms that indicate that you need a new smartphone

Google’s Android is one of the widest used operating systems on smartphones and the latest version of Android is Android 11. Over the past few years, we have seen more improvements with the overall performance of Android on a smartphone rather than visual changes. That’s because by and large Android is a fluid OS on a smartphone offering ease of use with its visual design. Some of the improvements we have seen under the hood include helping with getting more battery life from the smartphone and being able to run the OS fluidly on entry-level hardware. With Android 11 we have some functional changes and others that add to the convenience of using a smartphone. Here is a look at 10 reasons why Android 11 is better than Android 10.

Media Controls: All the media playback controls are moved from the notifications panel to right under the quick settings for easy access. This makes controlling media playback a lot easier.

Notifications: In Android 11, the way notifications are displayed has improved. There are now three notification categories: Conversations, Alerting, and Silent. The Conversations section highlights all the messages you receive from different apps. Silent lets you easily silence notifications from certain apps and alerts give you your app alerts.

Chat bubbles: If you use Facebook Messenger on your Android device then you’ve seen how the chat bubbles can be moved around on the screen while you use other apps. This feature now extends to other messaging apps letting you reply to messages without exiting the app or game you are playing.

Screen recording: There have been a number of apps that let you record the display on your Android smartphones and some OEMs even build the feature into their devices. The ability to record your smartphone screen is now a feature that will be available on all Android 11 devices as it will be backed natively into the OS.

Smart Power Menu: Holding down the power button will let you do more than just restart or power off the phone in Android 11. It will also give you access to IoT enabled devices letting you control things like lights, and more.

Google Pay: Holding down the power button also brings up a hub for Google Pay. This will help with faster access and easier payments using Google Pay.

Wireless Android Auto: If you use Android Auto in your car then you know that you need to connect the phone via a USB cable to the car to make it work. In Android 11, you will be able to use Android Auto wirelessly. The only catch is that your in-car entertainment system also needs to support wireless Android Auto.

Restore notifications: Don't you hate it when you clear all the notifications only to realise there are some notifications you wish you’d read? Well, fear not as Notification history on Android 11 stores all your notifications for the past 24 hours. This way, you have some time to revisit and see if you missed an important notification.

Dark mode: While dark mode on Android 11 isn't new, the ability to schedule it is. Previously you could only switch dark mode on or off. Now, with Android 11, you can schedule when your device needs to be in dark mode, or set to change from dark to light based on when the sun comes up and goes down.

Pin apps to share menu: Don't you just hate it when you want to share something using a particular app and you have to scroll through a list of apps to get to it? Not in Android 11. You can pin a particular app to the share menu and that app will always be up front and center making it easy for you to share.