Android eleven is on the way officially because there is a beta program out
there that you can sign up for now whether or not you should is what's on
the channel today
hello Automators thanks for tuning in again I'm Brian from automate your life
and today I'm going to take the frustration out of automation and out of
owning a Pixel or an Android device as we walk through all the latest updates
and upgrades that we're getting not just with Android 11 but with the operating
system as it stands today although Google sold 7.2 million pixel devices
last year and actually passed by one plus in terms of phone sales they are
still a long ways from Samsung and Apple in terms of catching those two companies
but what they are continuing to do is provide kind of mid-range options and it
looks like they're really going to do that even more this year and why I'm
talking about this is actually some surveys that came out very recently and
we're obviously obviously directed at the pixel for a and the pixel v and the
market that they're trying to hit now what has happened as of late is you know
we've all been sitting here waiting and I've been waiting for the pixel for a
for awhile I mean really since I had the pixel 3a because of just how good that
phone was on a very good budget price I really was looking forward to seeing
what they would do with the foray but it doesn't look like that three hundred and
fifty dollar starting point will show up until around August of this year
and unfortunately the pixel 5 looks to be delayed until October now we are all
trying to get a lot healthier and we're trying to do it with minimal effort I
mean that's what I'm trying to do but one of the ways that I've been looking
at trying to get a little bit healthier in my life is through a scheduled
bedtime routine or basically creating a bedtime routine that allowed me to
create a consistent schedule and we all know that that's really important for
our overall health now inside of the clock application google has actually
created some great functionality that's just come out recently
and you will see this bedtime tab down at the bottom now what's really great
about this is you can actually set a schedule and this schedule can be set by
day so if you want to kind of take the weekends off like I do you can see I've
turned off the weekends there I just turned on Sunday again but there's also
reminder notifications in a bedtime mode now this bedtime mode is really
interesting when you turn it on based on schedule then at 11:30 p.m. which you
can see is my start time for my bedtime then it will actually turn the whole
phone to grayscale and turn on do not disturb mode you can see those settings
at the bottom now you can also do it when it's charging at bedtime but it's
still going to use that schedule in order to show you some statistics which
I'll show you in a minute now the sunrise alarm is a really interesting
feature and you know people spend a lot of money on getting philips hue lights
and getting a whole wakeup routine set where the lights come on slowly over
time well that's exactly what happens with that and it basically brings up a
very red screen over time that will brighten your room quite a bit it's
actually fantastic now you will then have the alarm go off which you can
choose the sound and whether or not it vibrates and then for me I love the
Google assistant routines with these kinds of alarms you can you can find out
all kinds of information when you dismiss this alarm I get the weather the
calendar reminders and then if I'd like I could play some different content down
below so there's other things you can do too but I love these Google assistant
routines now as I go back to the main page of the bedtime page there's a
couple more things here you can see the recent bedtime activity
and as I tap through you can see where I've been using my phone even in that
grayscale mode after my bedtime or just before my wake-up time now I actually
adjusted my wake-up time to 8:30 here just the last day but this was basically
tracking at 7:30 and showing me all of these different
statistics now the other thing that I really enjoy is the sleep sounds and I
say that because you can actually go in and you can set a stop time so it will
stop making the sleep sound after up to an hour so this creates a really smooth
routine and it already has in my life and I'm already seeing some of the
benefits in terms of my sleep schedule I want to show you another application and
this is extremely powerful this is called the personal safety application
and this is something relatively new you would have been able to get this around
the start of June now what it can do number one as soon as you get into the
application they ask you to name from your contacts some emergency contacts
and you can always adjust that in the settings later now you also get the
ability for car crash detection to turn that on that's in the US right now you
can also add in a number of medical information components and these things
can show up so you can change the setting when your phone is found if
you're in a bad way well you can actually get people to see this kind of
information including things like your allergies and your blood type and any
medications that you're on now with that and the emergency contacts that you're
going to give them access to they can get to all the different people and all
the different information they need in order to help you now there's also a
crisis alerts when you first come into the application that you can turn on and
that's based on local information now they don't guarantee they're gonna give
you every local crisis alert but it's Google and they do have a lot of access
to a lot of information but my favorite component to this and I think every one
of us has a friend or a family member like this and they go out for an early
morning run on their own or they go out for a late night walk or they're out
doing different things late at night and we oftentimes have to wait for them to
call in order to know that they're okay call or text you can hit the emergency
sharing button and this will share your time location with your emergency
contact so you can just hit that hit share and you can put in a reason if you
want but you don't have to and that will actually send text messages to your
contacts and let them know that your emergency or in an emergency state and
you're sharing your location with them now if the share your map location of
course but the safety check is really that person right there walking alone
they're going for a run they're taking transportation or they're going for a
hike or they can write their own reason for what they're doing and then they can
set a duration for how long between now and the end of that event is or that
activity that they're going to undertake that they want to basically have as free
time so let's say they're going for a thirty minute walk
they set the duration as that they choose the people that they would like
to let know they hit turn on and now in 30 minutes if you do nothing with your
phone then those people will be notified that something has gone wrong with you
and that they should basically check in they'll get your emergency shared
location and you can see there's a call nine-one-one button on the bottom here
it's a very comprehensive app so what they have to do in order to stop the
emergency sharing from going off is hitting that turn off button now what
I'll also tell you is that when safety check is on you can see it right here
you can start emergency sharing or call 911 so you don't have to keep the app
open as you go for your run you don't have to worry about pocket dialing 911
actually close the app or at least turn off the app and then that would be your
quick way for getting to call 911 or start emergency sharing with your
emergency contacts something I personally do a lot of is actually
transcribing these kinds of scripts so I kind of prepped this a little bit before
I come and sit in front of the camera and talk to you guys about whatever
we're talking about that day now the recorder app has become paramount in
that within my pixel phone and this application has actually got some recent
updates that are so important I think and they're through the Google assistant
now what you can actually do is through the Google assistant start and stop
recordings as well as actually search the recordings and that is something you
could do by typing in in the search bar but now you can search by voice in your
recordings having really great accessibility for everyone is such an
important component of smartphones and since Google i/o 2019
Google has really been focusing on this now they have actually put out a tool
that not only really improves accessibility but it actually can create
a lot of productivity in your life in a very quick way now this is something
that I think has been missing from smart phones and widgets were really intended
to kind of help with that and and we see Apple taking on widgets a little bit at
this point with their iOS system but and and Google's had it within Android for a
long time but widgets never went far enough well you can enter in to what is
called action blocks at this point and this application I think is so important
even though it is really just intended initially as accessibility what it gives
you access to is your entire smart home in the entirety of the Google assistance
so anything you can write into Google assistant or anything you can say to
Google assistant you can create a one tap button that will help you manage
your entire life now we have created a number of tutorials and there will be a
much larger video here where you actually get to see the interface that I
have created to manage not just my smart home but my smart life in general so the
question as to whether or not to join the Android 11 beta is a pretty tough
one and I'll tell you that it came down to one thing for me but first I want to
tell you what some of the features are that enticed me to actually look at this
because there are actually well over a hundred features coming to Android 11
that we do not have on Android 10 now the first one that's really big for the
smart home audience is a smart home control panel or a home
power control panel now as you hold the home button in the new version or the
new Android 11 you'll actually get to an interface to control your smart home
everything from lighting to vacuums to thermostats and really a lot of other
devices throughout your home that's a really enticing feature that I want
access to today I'm also really looking forward to a I base feature that will
read the content on your screen and then if you're asking questions to it by
voice you are going to get contextual answers so it will understand what
you're talking about on the screen and you're going to be able to have a much
better conversation about what's going on with your Google assistant I'm also
really excited for simply put bubble notifications for messages so you know
what I use facebook Messenger in a lot of cases because I get that little
bubble notification that I can move around the screen and switch between
conversations I also really like the idea of the trashcan that is going to be
put in place for applications it means they can delete files or basically
remove files without fully deleting them for about 30 days but then they're going
to go away so this is going to become a really important component of managing
space and we all know lots of the pixel devices don't have a lot of extra memory
on them but what this came down to in the end for me was I read through the
terms and conditions of that beta program and if you go and you join the
beta well it's expected that you're going to run
into a few bugs now as a smart home user a heavy smart home user and someone who
has hundreds of applications on my phone what I have already heard of it is a
number of bugs that do exist and this obviously gets better as the beta goes
on longer and longer they have less and less bugs they have less and less major
issues but people are running into issues that they just cannot live with
and unfortunately what has happened to a number of my friends and colleagues is
that they have had to actually go and revert out of Android 11 now
that does to your phone at that time if it is your primary driver well your
phone is fully reset it's fully factory reset and you've got to start fresh now
obviously there's some things attached to your Google account at that point but
not everything and you're potentially losing a lot in that moment so to me it
came down to that I want to be able to show you guys everything I need to be
able to show you on the channel and I want to be able to make sure I can make
a phone call at all times and when you read the fine print there that's not
necessarily guaranteed one of the most important apps that I didn't have a
couple years ago is Google duo and I say that because I'm using that application
like crazy I'm making video calls I'm making audio calls I'm calling friends
and family on smart displays as well as on my pixel or my Android devices and I
used to be able to use it on my iPhone when I had that so it's all over the
place but what has recently happened is actually a director from Google came out
and said hey we're ready to announce that up to 32 people can go and have a
video chat on Google duo on a Chrome browser so that's the feature that they
rolled out now that's well and good but I had to ask the question and I actually
got a response right away about whether or not we would see this show up on all
devices so 32 participants will come to all platforms for Google duo video calls
and I think that's going to be a really interesting experience on a device like
a pixel smartphone for many years I have absolutely loved google play music and
there's one specific reason for that and that is that I was able to upload all of
my musical content to that service a number of years ago it was seamless it
was quick it was easy and it was free even and then I had access to all of my
music everywhere but I got a little bit nervous here when I started to see the
things start to shift over to YouTube music a couple of years ago we saw that
service pick up steam and we saw more and more users start to use YouTube
music and then it became clear that Google is going to switch over and I
worried about all of that music that I had uploaded but there is finally a full
transfer tool that many people can use around the world and you just need to go
to that URL log into your account and most of you will be able to actually get
your music transferred across to YouTube music and at that point you can start
using that service to do a lot of the same things that you were doing with
google play music with us all being such heavy users of the voice assistant the
Google assistant I think it's pretty safe to say that you have some Google
home or Google nest devices in your home and if you do then you want to get the
most out of those through a very similar update video to this that video is up on
screen now you can go check that out there are a ton of updates for that
whole ecosystem otherwise guys thanks for watching and of course don't hate
automate