What’s New in Android 11 Developer Preview 3? Debugging, Wireless ADB, and More

Android 11 Developer Preview 3

Android 11 DP3 introduces new debugging tools, wireless ADB, incremental ADB install, and a data‑access auditing API.

Debugging improvements

ActivityManager.getHistoricalProcessExitReasons() returns detailed exit reasons for recent process terminations, helping developers pinpoint crashes.

GWP‑ASan, a low‑overhead heap sampling tool, is now enabled by default in system executables and can be turned on for apps to detect native memory errors.

Wireless debugging

Wireless ADB is now a system‑level feature; developers can connect via command line and a pairing code without a USB cable. See the official documentation at https://developer.android.com/preview/features#wireless-adb.

Incremental ADB install

ADB incremental install speeds up large APK updates up to tenfold, but requires the new APK Signature Scheme v4 and works only on Pixel 4/4XL devices running the Android 11 preview.

Data‑access auditing

The new DataAccessAuditing API lets apps audit which code paths access user data, useful for large apps with many third‑party libraries. A Kotlin sample is available at https://github.com/android/permissions-samples/tree/master/DataAccessAuditingKotlin.

Related articles

CameraX preview

Husayn Hakeem’s Medium article shows how to display a camera preview with PreviewView, simplifying surface management.

Dagger navigation support in Android Studio

Android Studio 4.1 Canary adds automatic navigation to Dagger components, similar to the Database Inspector feature.

Kotlin object keyword

The article explains three uses of object:

Singleton classes – the compiler generates a static instance and a private constructor.

Companion objects – serve as a static substitute because Kotlin lacks a static keyword.

Anonymous objects – e.g., object : Xxx for creating ad‑hoc implementations.

Sample bytecode and decompiled Java are shown:

object Singleton {
    private var count: Int = 0
    fun count() { count++ }
}

public final class Singleton {
    private static int count;
    public static final Singleton INSTANCE;
    public final int getCount() { return count; }
    public final void setCount(int var1) { count = var1; }
    public final int count() { int var1 = count++; return var1; }
    private Singleton() {}
    static { Singleton var0 = new Singleton(); INSTANCE = var0; }
}

High refresh‑rate rendering

Android 11 flagship devices now support dynamic refresh rates up to 120 Hz. The blog explains how the framework renders frames and how apps can request different rates.

AndroidX updates

Navigation 2.3.0‑alpha06

Introduces Kotlin DSL for building navigation graphs dynamically, enabling navigation to on‑demand dynamic feature modules. Example repository: https://github.com/android/app-bundle-samples/tree/master/DynamicFeatureNavigation/DSL. Documentation: https://developer.android.com/guide/navigation/navigation-kotlin-dsl.

Fragment 1.3.0‑alpha04

Brings significant changes to fragment communication; the new API for passing data between fragments is documented at https://developer.android.com/training/basics/fragments/pass-data-between.