Android 12 Beta on Nokia X20 | What’s New?

Before we start, please don’t update to the Android 12 Developer Preview on your Nokia X20 if it’s your daily driver. The update is not stable enough or smooth enough to give you a reliable experience.

Now that this is out of the way, here is the video covering all the differences introduced with Android 12 so far on the X20 vs Android 11. Check it out below:

The update is still on the June Security patch, which tells us that this isn’t the most up-to-date version currently being worked on. It also doesn’t have any of the Material You aspects shown by Google which is in my opinion the most interesting aspect of Android 12. The improvements are mainly cosmetic and done to improve readability and one-handed usability.

RANT

At this point in time, Google still not using a black background in dark mode (or at least giving us the option to go with pitch-black) is some kind of cruel joke. Not only is dark grey ugly (personal opinion), but it also removes any advantage in power saving an OLED display would benefit from. It even helps highlight any OLED display color issues that may be present, from gradients to colour shifts. If Windows Phone and Meego managed to properly implement such a basic thing back in 2011-2012, why does Google insist on not doing it properly in 2021?

While I’m here, stop spamming us with the Google Assistant. Right now you can summon the Google assistant by:

1. Google assistant button (lucky us)
2. Search bar forced on your home screen, unremovable
3. Swipe from the bottom corner
4. Long press on the power button (disabled by default, yay)
5. “Hey Google”

Just fantastic. How is this any better than having ads baked into the OS?

Anyway, it’s still too early to pass any judgment on the performance of Android 12 on the Nokia X20 as this is called the developer preview for a reason. Here is hoping we actually manage to notice the promised under the hood improvements Google has promised for smoothness and efficiency on the final release.