Android L Is Android Lollipop 5.0

The next big update to Android is here, and it's called Android Lollipop

After extensive testing Google has finally revealed Android L 5.0 is in fact named Android 5.0 Lollipop.

Android Lollipop Has A Big Red Button

Google has now revealed Android Lollipop will come with what is being termed a “kill switch”. A feature called “Factory Reset Protection” will be included in the update that will ensure you need to enter a password before you can reset the device.

Google introduced a feature last year where you could remotely lock your phone down. If you were to combine both these features it would mean your Android phone has a “kill switch” so whenever you lose your phone or it’s stolen it’ll be rendered useless.

Apple has had a similar feature in iOS for quite a while so Google is playing a little catch up with this one.

Material Design is the driving force behind the new update. It completely changes the interface with more fluid animations and a cleaner design. There’s a brand new multitasking menu and even more ways to use your voice.

Most of this was demonstrated at the Google I/O when Android L was announced and you’ll find all you need to know down below this section.

The biggest addition in the announcement today is arguably the new battery saver mode. All devices running on Android L will be able to activate this mode and save more than 90 minutes of battery life between charges. The feature has been seen on various manufacturers devices but it is now a part of the core Android experience.

Android 5.0 includes multiple user accounts as well as a guest user mode. There is also a bunch of new ways to secure your device using trustedBluetooth connections.

The biggest announcement is when it’ll be landing. It will debut on three new Nexus devices the Nexus 6, the Nexus 9 and the Nexus Player streaming device.

It’ll then roll out to the Nexus 5, Nexus 7, Nexus 10 and the Google Play Edition devices in the coming weeks. No mention of the Nexus 4 so far.

Other manufacturers will then follow but we are yet to hear specific dates for the roll out. Expect your recent Android device to receive the update, especially if your manufacturer is pretty good at rolling them out thick and fast (e.g Motorola). 

Motorola Reveals Android 5.0 Lollipop Plans

Hot on the heels of Google's Nexus 6, Nexus 9, and Android Lollipop announcements, Motorola has revealed which of its devices will be receiving the new software.

According to a press release, Motorola will update both 1st and 2nd generation Moto X handsets, as well as both 1st and 2nd generation Moto G devices, the Moto G with 4G, and the Moto E.

"Once Android 5.0 Lollipop is officially released, we intend to bring this latest upgrade to many of our other Motorola devices," the company said. "

We’re still working out the details on timing and the upgrade depends on our partners’ support so stay tuned to our software upgrades page for the latest and greatest."

Head on over to page 2 for a full tour around all the new features within Android L. It’s certainly the biggest overhaul of the Android OS for a couple of years.

At Google I/O in June the company based at the evocatively named Mountain View announced the latest version of its mobile software platform – Android L. Except, it is no longer just mobile platform. The big push with Google’s latest reveal was the cross platform synchronicity between phones, tablets, computers, wearables, TVs and all other types of electronic devices. Make no mistake, 2015 will be the year that sees unified ecosystems (Apple and Microsoft are making similar plays) across all your electronics, and Google is making that push with Android L.

Android L Release Date, Name & Version Number

Until Google debuts Android L with a much-fabled Nexus successor (currently thought to be either a Nexus 9 tablet or Nexus smartphone), the software is still very much in the beta stage, which means the software we’ve seen so far in developer previews is still unfinished, and there’s plenty to play for. 

Android L is set to be version 5.0 of the operating system, but it's bound to have a different name upon public launch. Rumours have so far included Lollipop and Lemon Meringue Pie. Most recently attention has been drawn to the name Lion bar, a follow-up to the Nestle tie-in that began with Android 4.4 KitKat. That said, Nestle’s distribution of the Lion bar isn’t as global as the KitKat brand so it is unlikely we’ll see that plastered on the new OS.

Google has now uploaded an image of a birthday cake for the company’s sixteenth birthday. The candles on top of the cake turn out to be lollipops, a large selection of different kinds that would be enough to send any child into an uncontrollable sugar rush.

Could it be a hint at the new Android L official name? The marketing is covered with OK Google references as well making it look quite likely there will be a lollipop flavoured Google version in the very near future.

Many recent and consistent rumours claim we’ll be seeing Android L debuting on a new Nexus device during October, it’s thought it will rollout to existing Android devices during the same month.

Android L Design & UI: Material Design

A big emphasis of Google’s I/O keynote was the uniformity of its interface across a variety of devices, and a big part of that is its new universal design ethos, dubbed “Material Design” but Google’s design chief Matias Duarte.

Material Design is inspired by the physical properties of real world objects and materials, Google’s main example being paper – when a person sees a sheet of paper, or indeed any physical 3D object in the real world, they have an instinctive idea of how they can interact with it, how it will react to your input as a person. Material Design aims to translate this to the virtual interface, with the idea being that when a UI element appears, users will instinctively know what kind of input it is, what gestures will work with it, and so on.

Part of this revolves around a much simpler, more streamlined approach to UI graphics. If you thought previous “flat” interfaces were simple, then Android L cranks it up a few notches. Another key component is depth, app developers will be able to set a depth setting for individual UI elements, but on top of that they will have the option of using Android L’s persistent ambient lighting engine, which creates dynamic highlight and shadows on any menu should a developer choose to enable them. Google’s SDK includes a range of animations, transitions, icons, colour pickers, and other key components to allow developers to create apps which not only represent their brand uniformly across platforms, but which fit with Google’s aesthetic ideals as well.

Android Police has now produced a digital mockup of the Nexus 6 running Android L, based on information received from its sources. The info is pretty convincing and suggests the new phone, which will debut the operating system, will be a 5.9in phablet built by Motorola and styled after the Moto X (2014).

The image gives us a few more ideas of what Android L will look like - you can clearly see the new controls and overall aesthetic of Material Design. Also of note are the new icons for the dialler, messaging, Photos, Google Play, Play Music, and Google's Drive cloud suite.

It's also worth pointing out that the notifications in the top right have changed once again. The white colouration was introduced in Android 4.4 KitKat, but now the icons are solid rather than partitioned.

Android L Functionality & Features

Much like other rival platforms, Android L is seeking to expand usability, and a big part of this is the notifications – notifications will be more interactive than in previous Android builds, users can respond to messages within the notifications and generally get more info at a glance, including inside the lockscreen.

Personal Unlocking is another new feature which allows a user who uses a PIN, pattern, or password unlock, to set certain circumstances where these are bypassed as not necessary. For example, you could tell your phone that when you’re at home, a password isn’t needed – if so, that will be tied into your GPS location and wherever you’ve set as “home”. Similarly, you can pair the phone with a smartwatch and say that as long as it can detect the smartwatch in range, you don’t need a password on your phone.

Multitasking Has Undergone Some Changes

Being able to use multiple apps at the same point is a key feature of the Android OS and it is about to undergo a big change within Android L. Multitasking on Android will now work with a card-based list, a little like scrolling through a physical Rolodex on your desk.

Cards are becoming more common in the Android eco-system and it now means instead or every app being separate, it will now be split into tasks. If you’ve got three Google Chrome tabs open at the same time, you’ll now have three cards representing those individual tabs.

It should allow you to keep individual tasks separate instead of just keeping the apps separate. For a clearer idea on how it will work, check out this animation from AndroidPolice.com.

Android L Performance: 64-bit ART Architecture, Battery, Audio & Gaming

Google has worked with many industry leaders to optimise and refine Android L’s performance, it uses an ART architecture which is fully 64-bit compatible and optimised for a wide range of memory and processor hardware, as well as taking full advantage of next-gen, console-like graphics for high-end kit. The rumoured kill switch is real too, and you’ll be able to disable and factory reset your phone remotely, while Google’s efforts to improve battery performance gives us a battery saver mode to save an additional 90 minutes of use.

Other notable additions to Android L include improvements to audio processing and better imaging technology. With audio, L adds in support for the 96kHz sample rates and 24-bit depth. Previously it was 44/48Khz and 16-bit depth. 

"According to Google," reports Extreme Tech, "the 64-bit version of Android L will increase the amount of addressable memory space, allow for a larger number of registers, and introduce new instruction sets. Except for more registers, none of these features offer a particularly compelling reason to develop 64-bit apps — but on the operating system side of things, the 64-bit version of Android could be a lot faster and more stable than the 32-bit version. If Google puts enough resources into 64-bit Android, anyway."

Google wants to make phone and tablet batteries last longer, and one area it’s looking to make some improvements is in how applications and games are optimized – this is called “Project Volta”. In order to give developers a better idea of how battery-hungry their app is, Google has developed a new tool called “Battery Historian” which lets you visualize power events over time and understand how your app is using battery. A new “job scheduler” API inside Android L also lets developers set the conditions under which background tasks and other jobs should run – like when the device is idle or connected to a charger – in a bid to minimize battery impact. 

Android L will introduce support for OpenGL ES 3.1 is here, and it brings with it support for compute shaders, stencil textures, and texture gather for your games. Couple this with Android Extension Pack (AEP), a new set of extensions to OpenGL ES, and what you’re looking at is basically console-grade gaming. Games will be able to take advantage of tessellation and geometry shaders, a la PC and console gaming, and use ASTC texture compression across multiple GPU technologies.

Google Play Store 5.0 Shows Off Material Design

According to a leak from Android Police, it looks like Google’s Play Store will be getting the new material design alongside the Android L update.

The new update will be bringing some nice visual tweaks, this includes adding colour to the navigation tabs that blend in with the title bar. Colours will also be updated with Apps being green, Newsstand a lighter blue than before, Music orange, Books with a darker blue, and Movies is now red.

The app icons themselves will also be getting a slight update with some visual tweaks, it all looks a little flatter than what we have seen before. Yet again Google hasn’t managed to nail the Newsstand logo - does that really look like a newspaper to anybody? All in all though it looks like a solid design update with some more appealing traits to catch the eye.

Want To See Android L Crash?

An issue tracking website has discovered a problem with the LRW87D build of Android L. According to the Chromium website the latest build of Android L was running on the Hammerhead, Google’s code for the Nexus 5.

If you break down the code you can work out which exact version of Android L it is alongside the date. Within LRW87D we know it’s Android L from the L whilst the R reveals the code branch the build was made from. W87 means it was built on the 87th day of the third quarter of 2014. The final D means it was the fourth version of Android L built on that day.

Google admits the date codes aren’t always exact but it’d suggest it was built right toward the end of the third quarter. If you watch below you’ll find a video example of the crash. 

Android L Coming By Early December

Both the Samsung Galaxy S5 and Samsung Galaxy Note 4 are inevitably going to get the Android L update, the big question is when? One source has suggested both handsets will be getting the Android L update by the end of the year.

SamMobile, a trusted source on everything Samsung, has heard rumours the Android L update will be coming to the devices in late November or early December.

There is no official release date for Android L, but if Samsung manages to roll out its update that quickly it’ll be much faster than it usually takes. Usually it takes a little while for the manufacturer to get the update and fiddle around with it before rolling it out to consumers.

We already know Motorola is planning to release the update no more than 90 days after it receives the finalised source code from Google. Manufacturers seem to be taking on board the need for speedy software updates, plus it seems like Samsung may have sat up and taken notice as well.

Once we have an official release date for Android L and an updated schedule for Samsung products we’ll be sure to let you know here.

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