Google Quietly Unveils Android 5.1 Lollipop

An anonymous reader writes Google today announced that Android One, the company's standard for bringing smartphones to the developing world, is coming to Indonesia later this month. This makes Indonesia the fifth country to roll out Android One, in addition to India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Yet the bigger news is that these latest devices are shipping with Android 5.1 Lollipop. Before today, the latest known version of Google's mobile operating system was Android 5.0 Lollipop, which debuted in November 2014.

Comments

Yes meanwhile..

[Virtucon]

Here in the US with new devices we're still waiting for 5.0. It's still amazes me how slow the carriers and the device manufacturers are to put their bloat shit into a distro, test it and get it released. I'm going to see if CM is now ready and supports the Note 4, screw this lag time.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[viperidaenz]

If you want prompt OS updates, don't buy a Samsung. They never promised they'd give you later Android versions.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[ahaweb]

Samsung Galaxy S5 got Lollipop yesterday.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[dwywit]

Motorola Razr HD here. Bought unlocked from Telstra in Australia. They STILL haven't rolled out KitKat for the Razr HD. Been promising it since April last year, and Motorola have announced a rollout for Lollipop.

Seriously, don't buy Telstra. Yes, I know about CM and will be investigating that very soon.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Atzanteol]

It's not even out yet for any of the Nexus devices. https://developers.google.com/...

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Anonymous Coward]

My Samsung Galaxy S5 just got 5.0. They've promised it to that and many other devices. And guess what? They're (slowly) rolling it out!

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[gQuigs]

I'm in the US on AT&T. Out of those vendors (exluding Google) being sold with AT&T subsidy who has *promised* to give you later Android versions? How about on non-flagship devices?

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't even need CM, if you want official roms without unlocking the bootloader. Just use an unofficial tool to load the international version of the ROM, and it will bypass Telstra while still having the official ROM.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Thelasko]

I have a Nexus 7 with 5.0 Lollipop. Trust me when I tell you this. YOU DON'T WANT IT! It's plagued with bugs! It's like Windows ME all over again. There's a reason it wasn't rolled out by major manufacturers like Samsung. It never made it through their quality testing.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Hadlock]

5.0 is kind of crap and a big step backwards from 4.4.4, I unfortuantely upgraded my Moto G to 5.0.1 and it just kind of ground to a halt. They haven't released the 5.0 update for the Moto X 2013 yet and now I'm hoping that they'll wait until 5.2 as the new OS seems kind of half-baked compared to the ultra-polished 4.4.4.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Shados]

probably the old nexus 7, as factory images for 5.0 for the 2013 one just came out. Its really buggy, but other devices dont have that issue

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Shikaku]

Nexus 7 2012 and Lollipop don't mix. Don't update.

2013 fares better.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, 5.0.2 nightlies are indeed up for the Note 4. (here's the T-Mobile/Canadian version. Here's the Sprint version. The "eur" T910F version is also available, with nightlies coming soon.)

Some XDA threads for you: Development and Official nightlies.

Enjoy!

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Anonymous Coward]

A friend of mine has an LG G3 with the 5.0 update and he's been very happy with it. So YMMV, in this case at least.

If you really want a bug free OS upgrade I recommend you follow the Ubuntu upgrade rule of thumb: if it hasn't been out for at least six months, it will break your shit. It might still break your shit after the six months, but at least then you'll now for sure they're not going to fix it.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Anonymous Coward]

N7 2013 all sorts of broken stuff with the recent 5.0.2 OTA update, particularly BT related.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a nexus 5 at work. Although I already dislike android, this lollipop update really sucked for me. It reminds me of slashdot beta. It made the menu bright white,bigger font in the settings, sort of a more pictures less text feel. It looks like crap honestly, but some people may like it...... if they're mentally challenged.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[AaronW]

My Nexus 7 2012 has been unusably slow since upgrading to 5.0 and 5.0.2 isn't much better. The web browser is useless. Granted, I have a lot of apps loaded, but it was far better with Kit Kat compared to Lollipop. It looks like the biggest culprit is Google Mail since I have several accounts with a LOT of email.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[farble1670]

Here in the US with new devices we're still waiting for 5.0.

Then why do people keep purchasing Android devices from manufacturers that don't provide updates? Buy a Nexus device. It's not perfect but you'll get updates for around 2 years at least, and you'll have the cleanest, most stable, least bloated Android experience.

Google is about the software, so it behooves them to keep their devices running the latest. Manufacturers are about the hardware. Once you buy that device, their revenue stream ends. There's little to no incentive for them to provide you with updates. I've worked at a phone manufacturer, and it's a BFD to get a new version of Android out. Really big. Massive engineering resources.

Google isn't in Nexus to be a player in devices, they are in it to force other manufacturers to adhere to a better business model. They know the manufacturers won't do it until someone shows that it's viable. It's the same thing they did with cheap tablets when everyone was trying to sell them for $700. Buy Nexus, and show the manufacturers that you'll pay to have extended support and updates.

My experience for custom ROMs like CM is hit and miss. Often hard to find dists for your phone unless it's a flagship device, and when you do, they are buggy and unstable. It's a fine choice if you are trying to eek a little more life out of aging hardware, but otherwise you are better off with stock. It's the same reason the only Linux boxes I own are my otherwise outdated ex-Windows machines.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Anonymous Coward]

Work around:

WiFi:
Disable WiFi notifications, 5Ghz band (set it to 2.4 only), disable always-scanning, and disable optimization.

May or may not work for you, but worked for me.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Anonymous Coward]

I really don't understand how mobile updates are so buggy towards earlier models. They have fixed hardware. There's no surprises. WTF?

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Streetlight]

You hit the nail squarely on the head! My N 7 (2012) with Android Lollipop 5.0.0, 5.0.1, 5.0.2 has a long, crazy boot process, some apps are broken, notifications take forever to load (I disabled most of them), apps run slowly. I would hope 5.1 will be fix all these problems and allow me to run all my apps. I'm not hopeful.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[DigitAl56K]

On a Nexus 5 here.

- 5.0 shipping was announced something like a month before I could actually get either an image or an OTA update
- The Nexus 5 got the 5.0.1 fixes well after other devices like the various Nexus tablets
- The Nexus 5 still hasn't got the 5.0.2 update despite several other devices having it
- That's awesome that 5.1 is out! But for nearly all of us who care, it isn't: https://developers.google.com/...

Basically, Google does an awesome job talking the talk, and a shitty job of meeting the expectations they themselves set amongst their most fervent followers.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[thegarbz]

Samsung Galaxy S Google edition get updates, often faster than the Nexus line itself.

You've boiled down a very complex case to targetting one company. I assume you got burned and have a grudge? The fact is MOST companies are not offering timely or at all Android updates.

Your only option is to buy a phone which runs a stock version of Android either controlled by Google, or one of the few models where an agreement means you do get updates. You can count those phones on one hand.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[thegarbz]

There's a reason it wasn't rolled out by major manufacturers like Samsung. It never made it through their quality testing.

I'd buy this argument if we got timely updates to KitKat and Jellybean too. We didn't. One problem is not and excuse for the other, there are two issues at play:

1. Lollipop by all accounts is a load of shit.
2. Manufacturers by all accounts don't provide timely updates.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? I updated mine a while back (using the factory image instead of the OTA, so it was a fresh install), and it seems generally okay. It is definitely a little sluggish on UI operations sometimes, mostly when waking up the display, but I haven't found it to be particularly buggy.

What's broken that I haven't noticed?

Re: Yes meanwhile..

[AvitarX]

I've found it closes background apps all of the time.

On my nexus five, if navigation is running, the voice stops my podcasts for example.

I like a lot of the changes, but that has made it miserable.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

Based on my current, admittedly short, experience, I'm blaming Google.

I recently completely reset/reformatted my 2012 Nexus 7 and put CyanogenMod's CM12 ("Lollipop") nightly on it. I intentionally did NOT install the "gapps" (Google apps) add-on.

So far, my own 2012 Nexus 7 has been working great, better even than it was with CM11 ("Key Lime Pie"/Android 4.4.4) with all the Google bloat.

Google has been shoving more and more of the "Android" experience into their apps instead of the OS. The not only are the "apps" and "services" getting more digitally obese, but there seem to be more and more of them every release, just loading up and clogging up ram and occasionally "updating" themselves online doing who-knows-what.

I feel like I saw similar (though less obvious) improvements in performance with previous now-"obsolete" devices that I've similarly purged and custom-ROMmed without the Google Search/Play/Music/Plus/News-And-Weather/Mail/Now/etc.

You're kind of stuck with it if you're dependent on apps that are only available from the Google Play store, but I'm finding I can get everything I need from f-droid instead, or through the web browser, at least so far (and for my own needs).

Anyway, point is, so far it doesn't seem to me like it's really "Lollipop" that the 2012 N7 has a problem with...

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

...UNLESS you A)Get one of their "Galaxy" devices and B)are fairly confident that CyanogenMod or other custom ROM will likely be supported on it.

Thanks to the availability of Heimdall, you hypothetically have the ability to unlock and reflash any of the Samsung Galaxy devices (I've only tried on my ancient "Mesmerize" [a variant of the original Galaxy S] and my S4, but both worked fine).

I don't really feel confident that any of the manufacturers are going to bother keeping up with updating older devices, so the first thing I've been looking for since the harsh lesson I was taught by Motorola with my "CLIQ" [ironically still a useful device, having gained support from CyanogenMod back in Gingerbread] is the likelihood that I'll be able to update the device myself with a 3rd-party build.

Granted, that's not for everybody, but it's not as difficult as one might think.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Anonymous Coward]

check your version, Samsung got 5.0, not 5.1.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[ami.one]

Ya, N7 2012 is completely unusable with Lollipop.

But you can download any F2FS (filesystem) Lollipop ROM and it'll be fine again. For some reason F2FS is amazingly fast, at least on N7 2012.

I settled for a ROM called slimkat or something (see here: http://forum.xda-developers.co... ).

But even otherwise, on newer devices like N5 etc where its quite fast, Lollipop seems to be a mishmash of fisher price colors, too much wasted white space etc. Windows ME is an apt comparison. Though they may have been aiming for iOS 8.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Solandri]

Samsung pushed out Lollipop for the S5 a month after Google released it. You can thank your carrier for the extra 2 month delay.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[sd4f]

My first (and only) experience with android was heavily coloured by optus. Similar to telstra, they just don't release updates. What I learnt is, if you buy a carrier locked android phone, you're going to have a bad time. You never ever get a carrier locked android phone, it just adds another piece to the chain, and while the manufacturers are slow to release the updates, the carriers are even worse, and what for? They only install bloatware anyway.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Anonymous Coward]

In Europe too. My retail Moto G is still at KitKat, despite 4 months of lies from Motorola.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[gl4ss]

funny advice considering that actually samsung has been one of the best if not the best major brand in bringing prompt updates to their semi recent phones (your carrier might never roll them out with their shit but you could still flash 'em).

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Anonymous Coward]

Planned obsolence. This game is so easy for Google and Apple; publish intentionally bad upgrade and make people buy the new and shiny device. Repeat after two years. Profit.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here. After the first boot I thought that the upgrade went somehow bad, as I could not believe the phone was supposed to look so crap. All system icons were monchrome, buttons were indistinguishable by their look from other texts and the awful white layer between background image and grid icons was really a downer.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[swillden]

Google has been shoving more and more of the "Android" experience into their apps instead of the OS.

Yep, and for good reason: Because the apps get updated while the OEMs won't update the base system. By moving functionality into the Play services app, Google makes it updatable, reducing fragmentation and enabling security patch distribution. In 5.0, for example, the WebView component was moved out of the system and into the Google apps. This is the component that is riddled with security holes in 4.3 and earlier devices, but which Google can't update.

(Disclaimer: I'm an Android engineer at Google, but my posts contain my own opinions only.)

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[fizzer06]

I have the same device (N7 2012) and the 5.0.2 OTA update from 4.4.4 was a huge mistake. Updating Facebook helped a lot, but still had occasional 10 ~ 20 second freezes. No unexpected reboots after that.

Yesterday I wiped the cache partition as recommended and so far no problems of any kind.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[viperidaenz]

None, I would imagine. I don't care to find out what AT&T offer, since they have no coverage where I live.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[viperidaenz]

I didn't say Samsung was the only one. I was responding to someone complaining their Samsung Note 4 doesn't have Android 5.0.

Motorola have 9 phones all getting Lollipop. 3 G's, 2 X's, the E, the Droid Mini, Ultra and Maxx.

They're not even owned by Google anymore, The Chinese own them now.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[viperidaenz]

I don't have anyone to thank for any delays. I have a Motorola phone, it's already got Lollipop.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[san9jay]

Follow these steps to fix the Nexus 7 crawling after the 5.0.2 build of Lollipop. I have done this and the Nexus 7 is now working reasonably well.

Turn off your device.

Press and hold Power and volume down buttons simultaneously until you see a large arrow at the top of your screen.

Press the volume down button repeatedly until you see “Recovery” in the arrow.

Select it by pressing the power button.

You’ll see an android mascot with a red triangle and exclamation mark.

Hold down the power and press the volume up button once and then release the power button.

Press the volume down button repeatedly to select “erase or wipe the cache partition” from the list of options.

Wait for the process to complete and then restart your device.
If successful, you should notice an improvement in your tablet’s performance.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[guacamole]

Meanwhile, the Android KitKat 4.4.2 as shipped with my new Samsung Tab S 10.5 tablet is a mature, stable, and pretty smooth OS. I do not get the obsession with always chasing the latest version. I hang around XDA forums, and I feel like more than half of people who flash custom ROMs have no clue why they even need them, but it's some kind of badge of honor to get rid of the stock ROM. They complain about "lag" and "bloatware" which are supposedly fixed, yet no one ever cared to explained to me where I can reproduce that lag and why can't they just delete a couple of pre-bundled apps by hand.

Personally, I have run into three issues, two of which I fixed myself after rooting my device, and the third I can live with.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Anonymous Coward]

Google has been shoving more and more of the "Android" experience into their apps instead of the OS.

Yep, and for good reason: Because the apps get updated while the OEMs won't update the base system. By moving functionality into the Play services app, Google makes it updatable, reducing fragmentation and enabling security patch distribution. In 5.0, for example, the WebView component was moved out of the system and into the Google apps. This is the component that is riddled with security holes in 4.3 and earlier devices, but which Google can't update.

(Disclaimer: I'm an Android engineer at Google, but my posts contain my own opinions only.)

Google absolutely can update 4.3 to patch the webview vulnerabilities. Whether or not that update is pushed out to any given device on any given network is another matter. Currently, your only choice is to get 5.0 or get fucked. Further, ALL of the OS updating business could be handled by Google offering actual patches that users could install, similar to how every other sane operating system does it. The only missing piece would be rollback functionality on the off chance that the patch breaks something critical on the phone (well, given the overall state of Android, maybe it's not an off chance). A simple bootloader option would handle this, just like Windows has had with fucking system restore points for ages.

Shoving everything into apps isn't done for security or updatability. It's done because these apps are now sold separately as a separate item to all OEMs who want to include them.

Nor does it reduce fragmentation. Many users refuse to install updates because they drastically alter the functionality and appearance of the apps. You're bundling security fixes and feature updates into a single channel and giving users the same old choice as with the OS - update or get fucked. Read the reviews for Google Calendar, Google Plus, Maps, etc. I believe Calendar was the latest one - no more weekly view. The app was drastically altered making it unusable for many people. Luckily, I didn't update. Then again, who knows what security holes lurk in whatever version I have. And many devices aren't given the option to get version X of app Y. Your device has to have special flags buried somewhere within it to tell Google it's okay to let the user download Google Wallet or Google Talk / Voice / Hangouts / Whatever or even the latest keyboard. If you don't have those flags the app simply doesn't appear in the store. Of course, if your phone came with Google Talk and doesn't get Hangouts, then you're stuck with Talk, which sort of kind of halfway works, but is probably vulnerable to all sorts of shit and will never be updated. Or if you got hangouts but don't like it, your only option is to go back to the stock option the phone came with (or root and grab what you want from some 3rd party source).

Architecturally, divorcing the apps from the core OS is good, but you're still maintaining a single, bloated, ever-changing version of each app and the OS itself. Users are forced to update or get fucked. The apps and OS should rely on services or modules that you can patch separately from the apps and OS themselves. This is how sane OSes and applications do it. Further, users should have full control over the apps and services running on their devices. There's some merit to protecting them from themselves, but staged rollouts, magic flags to enable the download of certain apps, the inability to uninstall system apps, and hell, the inability to find out what the fuck half of the system apps/services are make Android a complete mess. Top all of that off with the incessant changes and you've got a mess no one can truly get a handle on because it'll keep changing forever, for no raisin.

Of course, Google has no reason to make Android stable or secure - they've got a conflict of interest built in. They need to tie people to the latest version in order to maintain control and to kee

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[bemymonkey]

What were the symptoms? I've been thinking about getting a N7 2013 for the nightstand...

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[serviscope_minor]

Then why do people keep purchasing Android devices from manufacturers that don't provide updates?

Two reasons. Firstly, people haven't cottoned on to the fact that phones are, well, I don't know. I was going to say small, shitty PCs in a neat box, but that doesn't quite sumarise it. PCs never needed updating (major OS upgrades) anything like as often as phones seem to. And they were almost always reasonably straightforward to upgrade (there are many small shops which will do such things for you).

An I know how everyone used t ojoke/quip/whine/brag that PCs went obsolete after 2 years. Technically that was true, but for most people, they bought a PC and a bit of software and it would run for a while. Then it would break and the neighbour's 15 year old would fix it (i.e. reinstall) and it would be fine again for a bit.

These days of course because much more is web based, you have to keep up with modern browsers and their requirements.

So people buy android phones because they're available in a huge range of sizes, shapes, prices and form-factors. And they don't realise that the software ecosystem around Android is quite astonishingly bad.

That's a combination of vendors who like locking bootloaders, and ARM which having never really been in a PC like place doensn't have the kind of hardware self-discovery stuff that x86 has. I'd blame network operators in the US too, but the situation is the same everywhere else in the world where SIM-only deals abound.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Anonymous Coward]

Wiping the cache helps - a bit. But it does not become as responsive as Kitkat again. I have flashed 4.4.4 again and its like someone released a brake...

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Rich0]

This is the component that is riddled with security holes in 4.3 and earlier devices, but which Google can't update.

It is news to me that they can't update this component on GSM Nexus devices sold directly by Google without the involvement of a carrier. Last time I checked Google was not updating all the ones which were vulnerable.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Xest]

"This is the component that is riddled with security holes in 4.3 and earlier devices, but which Google can't update."

Why not? Google sold me my Galaxy Nexus, they wrote the software. No reason they couldn't update it, they just can't be arsed.

Which is a shame, because I bought a Google phone believing it'd mean I'd get 1st class update support from Google with the carriers cut out, but it turned out that Google is actually worse at supporting some of it's devices than even the likes of Samsung and HTC are.

It effectively means you can't rely on Android or Google if you want a platform that will remain secure, you could find yourself vulnerable with nowhere official to go after a mere 18 months.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[B2382F29]

That's pure BS.

You mean it is pure coincidence that all the components that get pushed into the play services app are now closed source? (keyboard, location service etc. etc.)

How would it affect updatability to keep those components open source?

There is a reason to move these apps away from the "core" android: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in civilized world we can install what we wan't, and it'll just work with our operators.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Simulant]

I'd lay much of the blame at Google's feet. 5.01 remains pretty broken on my Nexus 4. The carriers are wise not to jump on it.
For two months now I've lived with a dialer that takes 3-4 seconds to respond to screen touches and random, complete phone lockups (about 1 every few days)
I'm not the only one: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=81593... and NO ACKNOWLEDGEMENT from Google.

I have a phone that can't reliably perform the most basic function of a phone and I'm fairly pissed off about it at this point... Windows phone is looking like a real possibility now. And you can forget about converting my iphone using wife. She's laughing her ass off.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Simulant]

To be fair, the 2012 N7 is broken to begin with... yet Google somehow gets to pretend it isn't.
Google seems to get away with far less customer service than most other companies.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[AaronW]

I did that numerous times and while it helped a little it certainly did not fix the problem. I even tried a factory reset and reinstall and that didn't solve the problem.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[AmiMoJo]

You are comparing Google to Apple. Apple announce an OS update and it is available immediately on all their supported hardware. Google release OS updates to their open source and developer channels first, and then they get released on devices fairly soon afterwards but not instantly.

Personally I'm fine with Google's system because day 0 updates sometimes go badly wrong. These are feature updates, security fixes get rolled out via Play to everyone as soon as they are available. App updates are also separate via the Play store.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[jeffmeden]

My Nexus 7 2012 has been unusably slow since upgrading to 5.0 and 5.0.2 isn't much better. The web browser is useless. Granted, I have a lot of apps loaded, but it was far better with Kit Kat compared to Lollipop. It looks like the biggest culprit is Google Mail since I have several accounts with a LOT of email.

It's annoying but doing a full reset (via the bootloader menus) helped my 2012 N7 to run great again with 5.0. I realized how few apps I actually needed to make good use of it, too. Battery life is still subpar, but it's almost 3 years old at this point so I don't expect it to be fresh as a daisy.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course you would say that.

But there is another view, too: Google has moved all that function into Google apps (not Android), because they want control over it. Facebook checks the location? Google wants to know, too. Want to run an app on Amazon Fire? Tough luck, no Google services.

So yes, there are some benefits for the customer, but it is not unambiguous.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[swillden]

You mean it is pure coincidence that all the components that get pushed into the play services app are now closed source? (keyboard, location service etc. etc.)

It's not coincidence, but it is a very unfortunate side effect. If we can find a way to fix the core system update issue I think this stuff will get pushed back into the base system.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[johnw]

My 2012 Nexus 7 (with cell connectivity) was upgraded straight to 5.0.2 just a couple of days ago. So far it seems fine.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[swillden]

Why not? Google sold me my Galaxy Nexus, they wrote the software. No reason they couldn't update it, they just can't be arsed.

The GNex is a problematic case.

Google actually doesn't write all of the software; even for Nexus devices the SoC manufacturer and device manufacturer provide quite a bit of the low-level stuff needed to make a device boot, and Google doesn't get the source code. For example, I worked on low-level integration for the Nexus 9 and I integrated with a lot of nVidia and HTC code which was provided in binary form only.

In the case of the GNex, the SoC manufacturer (TI) is gone, and it seems that no one has a copy of some of the critical bits of firmware. Google should have foreseen that possibility, and required that the relevant source code be escrowed, or something, but didn't. Such problems can be avoided going forward, but there's nothing that can be done for the GNex.

Out of curiosity, are you still using your GNex?

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[swillden]

This is the component that is riddled with security holes in 4.3 and earlier devices, but which Google can't update.

It is news to me that they can't update this component on GSM Nexus devices sold directly by Google without the involvement of a carrier. Last time I checked Google was not updating all the ones which were vulnerable.

See my other reply in this thread regarding the Galaxy Nexus situation. Google would update it if it were possible.

Re: Yes meanwhile..

[Anonymous Coward]

They do my friend. They do

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[RenderSeven]

On Nexus 5 (2x) and Nexus 10 tab. I let Google push Lollipop onto the tablet and have regretted it every day. Its buggy (all sound is disabled if you connect the charger unless you reboot), laggy, slow, and they deleted their decent email client and force you to us their crappy gmail client to access non-gmail accounts. Gadgets dont sync up properly anymore. I wont upgrade the Nexus 5's, probably ever, and they pop up reminders every 30 seconds to install 5.01 and 5.02 and cant be disabled. Im a HUGE fanboi but Google needs to add an update setting "I dont want your shitty release until you get your act together". Its their FLAGSHIP devices for chrisake, there is NO EXCUSE.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[swillden]

Google absolutely can update 4.3 to patch the webview vulnerabilities.

So can the OEMs. They don't actually need Google's assistance to fix this. Google absolutely needs theirs. And they won't do it. If they were willing to do updates, they'd move to 4.4.

Currently, your only choice is to get 5.0 or get fucked.

Or 4.4. KitKat's WebView is still in the core OS, but all of the known WebView bugs are fixed in it.

ALL of the OS updating business could be handled by Google offering actual patches that users could install, similar to how every other sane operating system does it

What sort of patches? Source code diffs? How would users install those? Binary patches to binaries built by many third parties with unknown modifications? Google can't create those.

Shoving everything into apps isn't done for security or updatability.

It actually is. Google is remarkably transparent about its goals and intentions. Sometimes I think the level of transparency backfires because everyone assumes there must be something else being hidden. People are so accustomed to assuming that corporations veil their true purposes, but I actually can't think of a case where the internal and external stories differ in any significant respect. And it's not like Google execs could be keeping a lot of stuff from the engineers like me, because we're the ones who actually make all of the key product decisions.

Nor does it reduce fragmentation. Many users refuse to install updates because they drastically alter the functionality and appearance of the apps.

The security upgrades are all in the services app, which has no UI, and maintains backward compatibility. You can update it without updating any of the apps that rely on it, if you don't like the new versions.

I believe Calendar was the latest one - no more weekly view.

The Calendar app has a weekly view. What was removed was the monthly view, but only on small screens where it was useless anyway. Tastes vary, I suppose, but I think the new Calendar app is awesome. In any case, if you don't like Google's calendar, there are a zillion others in the Play store. One of them will likely be to your taste.

Further, users should have full control over the apps and services running on their devices.

I disagree. I completely agree that users should have the option of taking full control over the apps and services running on their devices. This is why all Nexus devices are unlockable, and Google tries in various ways to encourage OEMs to make all their devices unlockable (with very little success, obviously). But making such control the default state is a bad idea because 99.99% of users would be harmed by it, not benefited. A modern operating system is a complex beast and securing it is hard, even without opening the door to random modifications... which may be made by the user or by someone with malicious intentions.

These are difficult and complex issues, but I think the approach Google has taken is a reasonable one: The security model assumes that the device is in a known configuration, and that the build number tells you everything about what's in the system, if it's a standard build. Users who want something else can unlock their devices and install whatever they want, but they are also taking full responsibility for the results.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[jareth-0205]

Google has been shoving more and more of the "Android" experience into their apps instead of the OS.

Yep, and for good reason: Because the apps get updated while the OEMs won't update the base system. By moving functionality into the Play services app, Google makes it updatable, reducing fragmentation and enabling security patch distribution. In 5.0, for example, the WebView component was moved out of the system and into the Google apps. This is the component that is riddled with security holes in 4.3 and earlier devices, but which Google can't update.

(Disclaimer: I'm an Android engineer at Google, but my posts contain my own opinions only.)

It also (in a side-benefit for Google) takes that functionality out of the hands of Amazon or non-Google-endorsed Android devices, and out of the open source.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[swillden]

Google actually doesn't see taking it out of open source as a benefit, but a cost. At least, that's the perspective that I see around me.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Rich0]

This is the component that is riddled with security holes in 4.3 and earlier devices, but which Google can't update.

It is news to me that they can't update this component on GSM Nexus devices sold directly by Google without the involvement of a carrier. Last time I checked Google was not updating all the ones which were vulnerable.

See my other reply in this thread regarding the Galaxy Nexus situation. Google would update it if it were possible.

Or the Nexus S. Or the Nexus One. Or the ADP... (Granted, I'm not sure that all of those are vulnerable, and I'm fine with cutting off support at SOME point, but even the ADP would still be supported under many desktop-oriented support cycles.)

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[asavage]

5.0 I still lollipop. No North American/European phone has 5.1 yet including Google's Nexus phones.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[asavage]

Android 5.0.2 seems to only be released to fix bugs on tablets. It doesn't seem to be released for any phones. Google did release 5.0.1 for Nexus 5 quickly but Google only updates devices slowly over a number of weeks. If you are unlucky you might get the update 2 or 3 weeks after others. Google should really allow people who want the update to install it without having to download the factory image and install manually.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Xest]

Yes I am still using my Galaxy Nexus because performance-wise it's still entirely adequate, it can still run everything I need and it seems silly to blow a few hundred quid when there's literally nothing wrong with the existing device beyond poor software support.

Even if I did decide to replace it I really just do not know where to go. I can't stand the crap that Samsung and HTC et. al. throw on top and don't particularly like much of what they have to offer half the time anyway. Many of the cheaper manufacturers like ZTE et. al. offer crap OS support, but at least they're cheap so it's understandable. I've been burnt once by Google and just don't have enough faith to try again. I've been using and have defended Android since the HTC Magic was released in the UK. If my phone were to fail now, I think I'd probably jump ship, I doubt I'd switch to the iPhone because I hate the horrendously locked down and overpriced Apple ecosystem and don't frankly find their UI intuitive and productive (though it's most definitely feels nice). I never thought I'd say it but I think I'd have to give Windows Phone serious consideration. I've always liked Nokia's hardware at least, and if Android isn't a reliable platform then it almost seems worth putting up with Microsoft's OS.

And I know what the official Google line is on the Galaxy Nexus but I'm having a hard time buying it. I'm struggling to understand how a bug at the application layer affecting the browser cannot be fixed because of something to do with lower level firmware. I do not see why you even need the low level source code when you can still interface with the existing binaries you have for a general update in fact - this is something CM seems to have managed many a time quite successfully. It frankly sounds more like an excuse to not have to commit resources to supporting an older device because it would take just a little bit more effort than usual, and so how will I ever know if Google will make that arbitrary decision on the next device I buy from them? It's not my fault Google made a boneheaded decision so Google should've stumped up the cash to pay the extra staffing areas to work around that fault, it's not like it's a cash poor company. Good customer service is stumping up to fix or work around your screwups, not just saying "Ah, well, we fucked up, why don't you buy another of our products to replace it?". I don't think anything less than a contractual assurance that my phone would be supported for something like at least 3 years could pull me back to Google right now. It'd take a hell of a lot to heal the burn of the Galaxy Nexus.

But even beyond this I'm noticing Android becoming far less stable. Maps seems to crash incredibly regularly now, and Chrome does too. The on screen keyboard also seems to keel over now and again. Increased compartmentalisation of components into apps seems to have gone hand in hand with decreased stability. I see this not just on my Galaxy Nexus but on my 2012 Nexus 7, which at least has continued to see updates, but has also seen the widespread instability of Google applications.

I understand why Google is moving the way it is, to increase modularity of parts, and I think that's entirely sensible - as a developer and architect myself I'm a massive fan of modularity and do not like monolithic designs. I just don't like the quality of software I'm seeing come out of that, and I'm still a little peeved about getting screwed over the Galaxy Nexus.

I'm concerned that Google needs to start rethinking it's Android strategy to improve quality control, and to start rebuilding confidence in it for people like me who were early adopters, long time supporters, but who have also become victims of Google's failures also. If Google achieves this by giving a guarantee of future updates for a reasonable period, if stability improves, then within the next couple of years I'd probably buy a new Google phone, a new Google tablet, and also an Android smartwatch. Without any of that I'm likely to continue just sitting on wha

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Virtucon]

Bloat also means more vectors for security problems and privacy loss. If I stay with the factory ROM, I can always root it and get rid of those afterwards but then more often than not I lose the update channel and have to unroot to get the next release. It's not efficient, unroot, reflash to factory, update, root.. Flashing a custom ROM keeps me current at least within an O/S release and without the bloat. It's not just a badge, it makes owning the device easier.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Blue Stone]

Strange, I have a Nexus 7 (2012) with Lollipop 5.0.2 and it's fine for the most part, wiht the only niggle being the occasional lag that occurrs shortly after unlocking it when it polls online services like gmail.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Anonymous Coward]

Google did release 5.0.1 for Nexus 5 quickly but Google only updates devices slowly over a number of weeks.

Disagree, it was available for most other devices weeks before the Nexus 5 at a time where user complaints were soaring.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[swillden]

And I know what the official Google line is on the Galaxy Nexus but I'm having a hard time buying it. I'm struggling to understand how a bug at the application layer affecting the browser cannot be fixed because of something to do with lower level firmware.

Pushing an update requires creating and signing a complete new system image. The problem may lie in the signing. I don't know the details.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[swillden]

I don't think there are any technical issues with updating the Nexus S or Nexus One (AFAIK). I think the number of active devices is just too small to justify the updates. But I'm just guessing.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[swillden]

I'm not going to argue about the feasibility. I don't actually know the details of why the GNex can't be upgraded. I could find out (and probably will), but I'm sure I won't be able to share the details, so there's not much point in trying to convince you. I'll just mention that since Android doesn't support blockwise updates, updating GNex requires generating and signing a complete new system image. It's more involved than you're assuming, and therefore there's more scope for it to be problematic.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Anonymous Coward]

So, Google is able to force handset manufacturers to ship Google's proprietary code on all Android branded handsets (when OEMs are obviously looking to ship their own replacements to differentiate themselves from competition), but is somehow "powerless" to require them to push security updates? (We're not even talking about new Android features)

Honest question : Do you Google people think the rest of us are retarded?

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Anonymous Coward]

One of them will likely be to your taste.

Sure, If you're willing to spend hours finding one that doesn't simultaneously want to steal your phone number, send SMSs, read your photos, spy on your web traffic and other shitty stuff that Google allows on their app store.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[danomac]

Lucky you, mine times out all the time and thinks it's not connected to the internet. Then voila, 25 seconds later it seems to have connectivity.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[danomac]

And you can forget about converting my iphone using wife. She's laughing her ass off.

Apple has done this too and will probably happen to her if she has the phone for a while. I still remember a major iOS update making my old 3G slow & unusable and breaking bluetooth.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[guacamole]

Well, for now after two months of ownership, I haven't seen any factory updates yet. To me it wouldn't be a big issue to keep rooting the device only every now and then. In fact, I am thinking of sticking with the KitKat when the Samsung Lollipop update appears. The 4.4.2 seems like a stable smooth OS. I'll let the other kids do the testing and update only when Lollipop has a killer feature that I need.

Also, don't forget that the custom ROM itself is a vector for security issues. I am talking about the custom ROMs that are uploaded on android forums by random unknown dudes, as opposed by well established projects, and then dozens of users can't install them fast enough.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Anonymous Coward]

right, it's not 5.1. which is what the article is about.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[strikethree]

I gave my girlfriend my "old" Nexus 4 with Cyanogenmod on it. It works very well. It has good battery life. I think it is technically considered Lollipop.

Looking at Windows phone is like forgoing a wife who needs time to become accustomed to being a wife for a $2 whore that you saw hanging out it in the seedier areas of town, all in the hopes of a long term relationship.

Re: Yes meanwhile..

[Anonymous Coward]

We just need to be patient that is all. :] It may not make you feel better, but it is the truth

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[Simulant]

" Looking at Windows phone is like forgoing a wife who needs time to become accustomed to being a wife for a $2 whore that you saw hanging out it in the seedier areas of town, all in the hopes of a long term relationship."

LOL... yes and I feel dirty just thinking about it.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[anon.adderlan]

If Google can require OEMs to install Google Play Services, then they can require OEMs to roll out security fixes (some of which need to be patched at the OS level) within a reasonable timeframe. Moving functionality into Google Play Services does nothing more than remove that functionality from open source Android, and make the general experience even more bloated and sluggish. Now any app which relies on WebView needs the closed source and propitiatory Google Play Services to run.

So much for open source Android

Google needs to just start holding handset manufacturers accountable, which they are fully able to, but choose not to.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[anon.adderlan]

Many users refuse to install updates because they drastically alter the functionality and appearance of the apps. You're bundling security fixes and feature updates into a single channel and giving users the same old choice as with the OS - update or get fucked. Read the reviews for Google Calendar, Google Plus, Maps, etc. I believe Calendar was the latest one - no more weekly view. The app was drastically altered making it unusable for many people.

Google has been consistently removing user functionality with each update. Calendar now lacks weekly view. Removing apps in Google Play's My Apps now has to be done individually (yet strangely you can still choose to install them in a group). Lockscreen Widgets are a thing of the past. And this reduction hasn't been isolated to Android. Just look at the current Chrome Bookmark Manager Google is trying to push on us, with design priorities such as having 'more delightful' images to look at.

And sometimes apps are disabled entirely. Updating my Note 3 to 4.4 required a root to get the phone recording app I use (which worked fine in 4.3) working again. And I know this has nothing to do with 4.4s security features because the app works fine on the Note 4 4.4. Rumor is it's due to a bug in the Note 3's 4.4 which I doubt can be addressed by anything other than an OS level fix.

Which reminds me of the other problem in the Android ecosystem: Everyone has someone else to blame. T-Mobile, Samsung, and Google all claim it's the other company's fault, and nobody is willing to be held accountable. And yet when apps stop working because of this mess, people hold the app DEVELOPERS accountable for not fixing 'their' bugs.

S*** really does run downhill.

Re:Yes meanwhile..

[anon.adderlan]

So can the OEMs. They don't actually need Google's assistance to fix this. Google absolutely needs theirs. And they won't do it. If they were willing to do updates, they'd move to 4.4.

Again, Google is fully able to hold OEMs accountable. If an OEMs doesn't agree to Google's terms, then Google shouldn't license them Android. And what about all the update problems people are complaining about here regarding Google branded devices? Seems to me Google is just as bad here.

Google is remarkably transparent about its goals and intentions. Sometimes I think the level of transparency backfires because everyone assumes there must be something else being hidden. People are so accustomed to assuming that corporations veil their true purposes, but I actually can't think of a case where the internal and external stories differ in any significant respect. And it's not like Google execs could be keeping a lot of stuff from the engineers like me, because we're the ones who actually make all of the key product decisions.

Then you're probably not aware of the wage fixing Google was involved in to keep the salaries of 'engineers like you' down.

The security upgrades are all in the services app, which has no UI, and maintains backward compatibility. You can update it without updating any of the apps that rely on it, if you don't like the new versions.

I just searched the Play Store on my Note 3 4.4 for 'Google Play Services' just to see if this update could fix my issues. Top five results are:

1. GServiceFix (which isn't even from Google)
2. Google Play Games
3. Google Drive
4. Sound Search for Google
5. Google Play Music

So I guess not, but what I'm more curious about now is how a non-Google app got the top spot.

What was removed was the monthly view

Oops. Probably shouldn't have commented on an app I don't personally use, but the reduced functionality argument still stands.

When the fuck will it be on my Nexus 5?

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought a Nexus 5 so that I could get Android updates quickly. Where the fuck is this update, then? Why the fuck am I not able to install this yet?

Re: When the fuck will it be on my Nexus 5?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mine arrived about 2 weeks ago.

Re:When the fuck will it be on my Nexus 5?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be a first world crybaby. You only attract third world mongrels that want to behead your ass. Pick up a gun and be ready to shoot back goddammit!

Re:When the fuck will it be on my Nexus 5?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lucky you. My Nexus 5 got its upgrade after a month of waiting and it just brought problems. The damn device silently shuts itself down when I leave the range of wifi at work. Funny thing is that it happens even if I have turned the wifi off. And according to device's own logs, it still has wifi activity (!!) just before system log shows that device was shut down.

2x better performance

[Anonymous Coward]

"[...] most responsive Android experience ever with up to 2x better performance than the previous version [...]"

Gotta love these marketing people. 2x better performance? Really?

How terrible did Android 5.0 have to be for them to claim these numbers? :)
Also, what kind of performance? Graphics? Computation? Memory? Battery?

Re:2x better performance

[amRadioHed]

They are talking about kit kat vs lollipop, not 5.0 vs 5.1. But with the awful memory leak in 5.0 that has never been fixed they did leave themselves plenty of room for improvement.

Because 5.0 is a crap?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a nexus phone, and when the Android 5.0 was pushed to my poor phone, without even blinking i found many blocking bugs, crashing apps, google map with strange behaviour, etc....
Even after the latest update, i am still having apps crashing here and there.
Was starting to wonder if it is time to switch to something else....even god forbids...iPhone....

Re:Because 5.0 is a crap?

[viperidaenz]

I have no problems at all with Lollipop on my Moto G

Re:Because 5.0 is a crap?

[Anonymous Coward]

My moto g is not receiving any update yet. Bought it unlocked.

Fragmentation alive and well.

Re:Because 5.0 is a crap?

[Anonymous Coward]

Was starting to wonder if it is time to switch to something else....even god forbids...iPhone....

Nooooo! Not iCrap!! Get a couple of soup cans and a string before that!!

Re:Because 5.0 is a crap?

[MightyMartian]

Be glad you weren't a Nexus 7 user, particularly the 2012 edition. Lollipop was an unmitigated catastrophe that Google has still only partially patched.

Re:Because 5.0 is a crap?

[Plammox]

Oh well, the Nexus 5 was my first Android phone after the iPhone 3GS. Android (and especially the supposedly cleaner Google builds) isn't all it's cracked up to be. 5.0 made the phone much less responsive than on 4.4.4 and 5.0.1 didn't help. I don't suppose 5.1 will either.

Jolla/Sailfish sounds like an interesting option for the next purchase.

What is with naming software after candy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or after stuffed animals, or after women, or after star wars characters, or after booze.

"We had major Stability problems in Donut that popped up again in Gingerbread, but we fixed them in Ice Cream Sand-witch."

"FSCK did not work in Feisty Fawn as well as it worked on Maverick Meerkat, but that's fixed now in Uropic Unicorn (Fuck we have stopped even using normal words now) with the new switch "FSCK -it", which makes things just work now irregardless of what you run it on."

Just Stop. Stop it.

"We didn't have that kernel panic issue since Jack Daniels, but then again we started getting sigfaults in Captain Morrigan which caused a lot of page violations to occur."

Just fucking stop.

You sound bad enough talking geek, now your boss and every single sysadmin since forever is going to look at you like you are have about as much sanity left as bag of peanuts in a insane asylum lobby vending machine.

There's a very good reason why developers of the 40's through the 90's used version numbers. You finish the meticulous assembly of a mechanical cryptanalysis machine to crack the nazi enigma code and you don't want to officially name that sucker "munch-face"? No, you do the versioning because, professionalism.

The joke is done

Re:What is with naming software after candy?

[sexconker]

This.
I'm also sick of idiots who use shit like "1.2.6.27 beta" as some sort of version string.
No one knows what your asinine convention is, so it's meaningless.
No one in your office understands that asinine convention either, and for the 3 people who do, they'll change "1.4.2.12" to "1.5" for marketing purposes anyway.

MS got this right - you get a straight sequential build number if you need it, otherwise it's a simple "Windows 7" or "Windows 7 SP1" convention.
Of course, they fucked that up with "Windows 8.1" and "R2" for all their server shit. Essentially they're:
1) Killing off service packs for the server software because they want to charge for another license when the historical precedent was a free service pack.
2) Refusing to release Windows 7 SP2 because it will trigger a support extension.
3) Refusing to release any service pack for Windows 8 because they want people to forget it (despite the fact that there's nothing wrong with it).
4) Skipping 9 because they REALLY want people to forget Windows 8.

Re: What is with naming software after candy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 8 has nothing wrong with it!? - Muhahaha

Re:What is with naming software after candy?

[Em Adespoton]

The GIMP doesn't sound like such a bad name for a graphics manipulation package anymore, does it?

Re:What is with naming software after candy?

[tompaulco]

It's some kind of linux weenie thing. All of the linux modules are named after completely unrelated things so that people who aren't in the know can't possibly determine what it is for.
It has spread to other workplaces as well. Where I used to work, they started naming programs for user input after birds of prey or after construction machinery instead of what the programs actually were for. I think it is for people who like to think they are smarter than everybody else and they have to reinforce the idea by making it impossible for others to understand what program they need to use without asking the "gurus".

Re:What is with naming software after candy?

[jmac_the_man]

3) Refusing to release any service pack for Windows 8 because they want people to forget it (despite the fact that there's nothing wrong with it)

You're dumb. Windows 8.1 is a service pack for Windows 8.

Re:What is with naming software after candy?

[PPH]

No, you do the versioning because, professionalism.

And because its easier to figure out earlier/later releases than trying to remember if Jack Daniels > Captain Morrigan. And one can more easily deduce that Perl 5.10.1 to 5.12.2 is a relatively minor change compared to the jump to Perl 6.

Re:What is with naming software after candy?

[Sreerambo]

I think more people are starting to use semantic versioning: http://semver.org/

The gist of it is:
Given a version number MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH, increment the:

MAJOR version when you make incompatible API changes,
MINOR version when you add functionality in a backwards-compatible manner, and
PATCH version when you make backwards-compatible bug fixes.

This way the numbers actually mean something in a somewhat consistent way across programs.
npm packages use this for example.

Re:What is with naming software after candy?

[Bing Tsher E]

It's for people who have a mediocre tech knowledge. They work for a company that produces RF devices, and they are one of the techs in the R&D lab, but they actually don't understand the difference between depletion and enhancement mode MOSFETs. That could matter sometimes, but instead they're the guy who started calling the new front end design 'the salamander' so they know enough 'in' lingo to get by.

Re:What is with naming software after candy?

[Shados]

+1 for that. Semver is awesome.

Re:What is with naming software after candy?

[Anne Thwacks]

Unfortunately, it is not possible to google for numeric strings in any useful way, naming 3.17.5 "Pregnant Pussy" makes it possible for a search engine to find the information you want (or a load of cat sequin porn and some Hello Kitty related spam - but you always get that anyway),

It is true your colleagues will think you are an utter nutter, but they think that anyway - mostly because you are,

Re:What is with naming software after candy?

[Anonymous Coward]

They are skipping "Windows 9" because that's how dumb programs look for "Windows 9[58]"

Re:What is with naming software after candy?

[Anonymous Coward]

OP here.

When you come into a sales meeting with me talking about the power of the Salamander Platform, and start naming different components after different parts of the salamander, you had better have some fucking impressive technology at a good price and your presentation better sparkle like a kindergarten class that got into the glitter jar unsupervised or else your ass is being shown the street and is never coming back in my building. Unless it's an O'reilly book (really, the hidden cynisim is entertaining, e.g. Tortoise on the front of a Powershell book, meaning this is going to take awhile), if you involve animals, robots, women, food, inebriating substances, latin, or just plain weird naming conventions in your product offerings, I am going to avoid them, because if you need to resort to marketing gimmicks to sell me on something you have failed.

"This system has the powa of the cheetah" is not going to convince your average, jaded, cynical, extremely critical sysadmin.

I'm an ops guy. Where this naming BS comes from is operations guys tend to name their equipment. For example, I named by backup rotation disks after Southpark characters; I needed unique, easy to remember names that if I had a dozen disks in rotation and one blew up, I could easily locate it by the label without any Dyslexic fun, and I needed a convention with enough namespace to expand to a hundred or so disks if needed. Decided on this methodology because it works well, and because good times when DISK_KENNY and DISK_TIMMEH get tossed 20 feet after slipping on ice, Kenny dies, and Timmeh runs slower than normal for a few weeks until meeting it's ultimate demise. I've seen datacenters where machines are not named after asset tags but the characters to the andy griffith show among other things. For Ops people, on a small scale, there's a security and surity value to nicknames for small scale systems; when you get larger scale you go with asset tags, for naming, everything, ever.

If I walked into a major corporate network with 30,000+ clients, and the data center had devices named "Kenny12" and "Cartman15", after reading 3 to 4 such names, I would reign down upon high with my mighty 15 year old java-based smartphone telnet client, pass the judgement of [FAIL], and divide the root of a negative integer by zero thus resulting in the entire place to sinking into a black hole of cybernetic oblivion, forever. I would do this, right then, right there, without thought to the consequence of my actions.

For Software builds - semver or similar should be the standard. As an Ops guy, don't waste my time in forcing me to read through 100 changelogs to update firmware to make sure my config is still compatible. I read the major changes, minor stuff if I need it, then the bug fixes if I have a particular concern. semver.org = yes please. Ops people will love you.

Re:What is with naming software after candy?

[swillden]

Semver is a re-branding of an old idea... and the original was slightly better, IMO.

In the original approach, major and minor had the same meanings, but "patch" (AKA subminor) was for changes that are both forward and backward compatible. If the version numbering scheme is applied to a shared library (the context in which this scheme was invented), and you have a program which was written and built against version x.y.z,

The program must be modified and recompiled to run with version x+1.?.?.

The program can run against x.y+1.?, or indeed any version with major version x and a minor number greater than y. However, a program built with x.y.? may not run if dynamically linked with x.y-1.?. That is, changes in minor version number are backward but not forward compatible.

The program can run against any library version x.y.?. Subminor version number changes are forward and backward compatible.

Re:What is with naming software after candy?

[Anonymous Coward]

No it isn't. It's 8.1. It's a different OS according to MS. This means Windows 8 support can end earlier because no SP was released. SP releases trigger support extensions.

Re:What is with naming software after candy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit.
They had 2000 and 2003.
When 2008 came around with the new kernel (the Vista of the server line), they didn't make a stink about dumb programs looking for "20" or "200".
Further, you can just pass a modified version string to programs via the Compatibility Mode feature.

Skipping 9 is a marketing move and nothing else.

Re:What is with naming software after candy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hand in your geek card. And your CS card. And any cards advocating you are not a simple human being, like 98% of the population.

Re:What is with naming software after candy?

[Anonymous Coward]

That was the pattern that I recall using when working at DEC back in the 80s. Dunno why this stuff gets so complicated.

Re:What is with naming software after candy?

[electrosoccertux]

This.
I'm also sick of idiots who use shit like "1.2.6.27 beta" as some sort of version string.
No one knows what your asinine convention is, so it's meaningless.
No one in your office understands that asinine convention either, and for the 3 people who do, they'll change "1.4.2.12" to "1.5" for marketing purposes anyway.

MS got this right - you get a straight sequential build number if you need it, otherwise it's a simple "Windows 7" or "Windows 7 SP1" convention.
Of course, they fucked that up with "Windows 8.1" and "R2" for all their server shit. Essentially they're:
1) Killing off service packs for the server software because they want to charge for another license when the historical precedent was a free service pack.
2) Refusing to release Windows 7 SP2 because it will trigger a support extension.
3) Refusing to release any service pack for Windows 8 because they want people to forget it (despite the fact that there's nothing wrong with it).
4) Skipping 9 because they REALLY want people to forget Windows 8.

This. While we're at it, I'm sick of people starting their post with "This." instead of permitting their elaboration to imply agreement with the parent.
This. This bugs me.
This.
please stop.
This. I agree, please stop gaudily using "This."

Re:What is with naming software after candy?

[electrosoccertux]

what? This is the days of google chrome where every update is "significant"

Re:What is with naming software after candy?

[sexconker]

If shitty names and shitty practices are required for a "geek card", then I sure as fuck never had one.
I can't hand in my "CS card" because my parents paid for it and they've got it framed on their wall. (I assume you're referring to my actual computer science degree - if you're trying to make up another shitty "meme", fuck off.)

Re:What is with naming software after candy?

[sexconker]

If you break compatibility it's a new product and needs a new name.
If you want that name to be "Product 2.0" that's fine, as long as you keep supporting the original version.

Re:What is with naming software after candy?

[anon.adderlan]

Unfortunately, it is not possible to google for numeric strings in any useful way

Sure it is. I do it all the time. The trick is to add additional context, such as, oh idontknow, 'Android' or 'fix' or something. Then again, if Google was concerned about findable names, they wouldn't have named their major languages 'Dart' and 'Go' :)

Small phone for First World

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in the First World, but I do not want a 5" monster in my jacket pocket - I want a small, sturdy ( thickness no problem ) phone I can keep in my back trouser pocket **that is not a bottom-end device**.

Do I now have to travel to Indonesia to find one ?

Re: Small phone for First World

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a Moto G.

Re: Small phone for First World

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think a 5" is a monster, I feel sorry for your girl!

Re:Small phone for First World

[bn557]

I have a S4 Mini, it is slightly larger than my Aria was, and around the size of my Old Evo3d. It's about as big as I want to have in my pocket (and not even skinny jeans, just regular old pants). It's an 'old' generation, but I got 4.4.2 working on it fine (yes, I, I did the actual build and released it on Xda), and will eventually get around to getting 5 working on it. It's a dual core snapdragon 1.7ghz with 1.3gb of ram(probably 1gb and something messing with it in my CM rom). I've been happy with it for the year I've had it, and won't upgrade until something else this size comes out.

My only complaint is it's a Spring 'Spark' device, which is tri-band LTE, but doesn't support SVDO/SVLTE (Simultaneous Voice and Data) so when I get a call and I'm tethered, the data drops.

Re: Small phone for First World

[Anonymous Coward]

But as Steve Jobs said: "that's too big to get your hand around it!"

oh no, not again

[Anonymous Coward]

so the nexus 7lte has only just had factory image released for 5.o.2 and now they are already talking about next step up, not just big fix, so how long will they make nexus 7lte owners wait this time, seeing how that rapid issue of updates etc is the major selling point for a lot of nexus buyers..
very soon we will be getting the android version of ms patch tuesday, probably android friday, not monday, its google. if device makers have gone over to two release windows per annum, not one, roughly in two groups around big shows, why cannot google get in step with makers and unless there is real important security issues or massive performance gains, delay a major decimal update to sync more to makers cycle?

I'll be upset ...

[farble1670]

... if Lollipop runs smoothly on a 1.3GHz processor. it doesn't even run smoothly on my 2.7GHz Nexus 6.

Re:I'll be upset ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I must have terrible expectations. My Nexus 4 handles Lollipop well enough for my (admittedly basic) needs.

Re:I'll be upset ...

[farble1670]

Your Nexus 4 has 2x the RAM of those devices.

It's not that I'm displeased, but I'd expect it to be A LOT faster on a Nexus 6 than say a Nexus 5. In reality there's almost no difference.

Re:I'll be upset ...

[Shados]

Its pretty damn blazing on a nexus 6. The only real lag comes from the software encryption (which got better with updates, but its still not as fast as it should be).

Im personally fine with it, but loading up lollipop without encryption and the thing screams.

Android 5 is broken

[Sean]

Android developer here. Samsung has good reason for not pushing an update: The update breaks a lot of stuff.

+1

[goldcd]

CM is 'nice' but (and I might be being cowardly here) - has enough rough edges and battery hammering on their bleeding edge stuff, to make me want to shy away.
If you want 'latest stock' ideally get a Nexus or a "Google Play edition" phone (which you can 'upgrade' your carrier bollocksed phone to easily enough if they support your model).
Should phone vendor specific bells and whistles be your thing, or there's no Google play rom, then just randonly pick a foreign GSM carrier that got their release out early (normally as they didn't mess too much with the original, unlike some of the larger mobile companies who seem to feel 'they know best' (and want their useless music store cluttering up your phone)).
*points to XDA developers*

Re: +1

[Anonymous Coward]

CM is the standard OS on the One Plus. I have to say that in the 4 months of ownership it has given very few problems and has very little in the way of rough edges. In comparison to my Note Classic, it has far few glitches. Whilst that could be mostly because of android improvements (Note was ics and One Plus is kitkat), it all works very well for me. Worth mentioning as well that CM has saved many devices abandoned by their manufacturers.

Random Reboots Daily, buggy, I now hate Google

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a Nexus 4. I really like the phone, and 4.4.4 was great. I now have 5.0.1. I hate it. I now hate google for what they did to my phone. I went out bought a new iPhone 4 and I like it better than the Android phones i ve had. I'll keep my Nexus 4 until my contract is paid, then I'm going to all Apple. Fuxk Android. fuck google.

I really am this pissed. The UI is horrible, it reboots at least once a day from an app crash, and its very very very buggy. Fuck Google.

Google has become Microsoft of the 90s. That's how bad it is.

Re:Random Reboots Daily, buggy, I now hate Google

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a good thing the factory image for 4.4.4 still exists.

iPhone 4 units aren't even new anymore, anyway.

Such a dumbass

[Anonymous Coward]

3) Refusing to release any service pack for Windows 8 because they want people to forget it (despite the fact that there's nothing wrong with it).

You are dumb and should feel dumb for being dumb.

Yaaaay

[Anonymous Coward]

Yaaay to the 100 people that can run it!!! Time to buy a new phone to get the latest supported update!!

Latest was actually 5.02

[Anonymous Coward]

The latest before now was actually 5.02. It's only shipped on a few of the Nexus devices though.

Xperia :(

[Anonymous Coward]

My Xperia Z2 still running 4.4.4 :(

Re:Xperia :(

[Anonymous Coward]

I long back to 4.4.4...

Semantic versioning is BRAIN DEAD

[Anonymous Coward]

MAJOR version when you make incompatible API changes,

When is it OK to make breaking API changes? NEVER! Once a product is released you should keep it compatible. If you don't, then its another beast and you should CHANGE THE NAME. Then each release has a serial number. And that's f*ing it.

android one

[Anonymous Coward]

When will android 5.0 come in android one...?

Where did the real nerds go?

[radl33t]

Why aren't all you nerds rooting devices and using whatever OS/kernel/apps/bloatware/radio/store you want? So many people here complain endlessly about carriers and poor support. Yet you can basically get whatever hardware you want with whatever OS you want. Pair VOIP and ubiquitous wifi with sleazy or hyper discount data service and the effective cost of mobile computing is 1/10th that, or less, compared to the major carriers. Yeah. I get it. It sucks that it has to be this way, but that is only the case for people who can't work around it.

Re:Where did the real nerds go?

[badzilla]

If you really know what you're doing AND you get lucky with reasonable community support for your model of phone then yes this works. Otherwise there is a very good chance you will brick your expensive hardware. THAT is why everyone is not "just doing it."

Re:Where did the real nerds go?

[radl33t]

I've never really had any idea what I'm doing and I haven't failed yet. I don't even recall reading about bricked devices while involved, just the warnings. Warnings that apparently make many very fearful. I don't know how these concerns are any different than the myriad of ways you could destroy a self built PC, modding an x box, recompiling a linux kernel, etc. Suddenly, straight forward steps on xda and everyone is afraid of bricking a device. An easy way (and smart for other reasons) to mitigate that risk is to simply use older hardware. Due to the absurd frequency of turnover in the mobile space, old hardware is effectively free and disturbingly capable.

My first two phones were t mobile windows mobile 5.1 thing and a motorola cliq2. They were not hugely successful models, but they both had smallish dev communities doing the job. My recent phone, sprint my touch 4g, is essentially a galaxy s2, but with some differences that require its own treatment, thus the community is also small. Nonetheless, there have been many, many options for all these devices. (Not to mention the nexus and galaxy devices I've worked on)

In summary, I think you're overstating the challenges. Just do it.

Not surprising

[sjbe]

It's still amazes me how slow the carriers and the device manufacturers are to put their bloat shit into a distro, test it and get it released.

Why would that surprise you? The carriers have pretty much zero financial incentive to update existing phones. They just want to sell you a phone and they would actually prefer that you buy a new one rather than eek more life out of your old one. Same with lots of device makers.

Google and Apple (and a few others) actually understand that providing timely updates for phones in the field actually improves customer loyalty. But carriers and from what I can tell the majority of Android device makers haven't figured that out or don't give a shit. If they don't think that you are likely to buy another one of their devices (and chances are you won't) then why would the bother updating it? Stupid short term thinking but that seems to be the reality.

Motorola better get its act together

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm looking at ditching my old Symbian Nokia for a Moto X, but not while it's running KitKat. Hell, KitKat doesn't have half the capabilities of Symbian.

My Symbian can connect to SMB shares, xfer files by bluetooth, has incredible battery life, takes beautiful pix. The only thing it doesn't do is Skype and that's only because the new owner Microsoft killed Skype for Symbian. That automatically killed Windows phones for me, nope not ever.

Not so much anymore

[Imazalil]

My N4 & N7 (2013 wifi) just got the lollipop two weeks ago.

Yes, I understand staggered deployment and all that, so it's not going to be instant, but this is almost as bad as Samsung.

Re:Not so much anymore

[farble1670]

what's hard to believe is that you are complaining about that. you should buy Apple friend.

the idea that Google could instantly roll out a major OS version upgrade to tens of vastly different devices from 10" tablets to 4.5" phones across at least 4 different manufacturers is really nuts if you have the least inkling of what's involved the engineering process.

p.s., my 2017 N7 Wifi has had Lollipop for over a month, along with my Nexus 10 that was released in 2012.

We have lives?

[Imazalil]

We grew up and got lives and/or jobs. A good number of us deal with software and hardware all day, so want our phones to just work without too much hassle.

Re:We have lives?

[radl33t]

That's a shame, both your assumptions about those who do have the time or desire to take control. And for your own loss.

It's more than bloat, It is PTCRB

[pablo_max]

While I agree that this time around they are all very, very slow, it is important for people to understand that in the US, the phone manufacturers cannot just "release" new software when ever they want.
Nearly all carriers in the US are members PTCRB. When you update the software, you need to test and re-certify it. You need to update your SVN number as well.
This takes time.
Grants, not as long as it is taking. Unless of course, there are some fundamental issues which cause the protocol tests to fail.

what a joke

[electrosoccertux]

I finally got everything set up nicely with 4.4.4 on my Nexus 5
was really started to appreciate the Holo themes to everything (remember? battery saving for Amoled screens!)
they they went and came up with this notion that white is better because you shove stacks of paper around on a desk, that's what your phone should do too (Material Design). That paper stacking business is gaudy and messy. No thanks. I'll be staying on 4.4.4 for as long as possible, and I have backups of apps that have changed to the new design layout, like Gmail, so that I can continue to view 8 emails on my inbox screen instead of 5.

They make us get bigger screens an then they simply make everything on the screen bigger and waste the space, instead of improving productivity.
I'm almost ready to switch to Apple. Tired of dealing with silly bugs and poorly executed design

Re:what a joke

[anon.adderlan]

this notion that white is better because you shove stacks of paper around on a desk, that's what your phone should do too (Material Design).

There are as many legitimate environmental and physiological reasons to use white backgrounds as their are black, but because Google can't control any of these factors, they should leave such settings upto the user.

I'm not sure Apple gives you more choice in this matter however. Remember, Apple is a company which doesn't even allow you to change the mouse pointer in OS X, and won't honor their support contract if you (somehow) do.

What does it fix?

[Kwyj1b0]

Long time android user here - currently on a Nexus 5. Lollipop seems to have ruined the android experience. The native calendar app is just horrible (try adding a monthly recurring meeting for the first Thursday of a month on a Tuesday - or try adding a meeting for tomorrow today; the user experience is horrible). It keeps forgetting my settings after any restart (Auto brightness damn you). And their "battery-saver" mode is a joke (here is an idea - let the clock frequency be lower whenever the screen is off, rather than waiting for the battery to drop to 15%, and then making it so slow that it is unusable). Oh, and by all means, make everything white. Launching a native dark theme is impossible for a company with such limited resources.

I'd put CM in, except for some bone-headed work restrictions. I had to jump through hoops to get it remotely usable, and there is no easy way to roll-back to the prior version. The fire phone is looking pretty sweet by comparsion!!!

Still waiting...

[kmoser]

Still waiting for an upgrade to my Motorola StarTAC.

Android Evolution

[Anonymous Coward]

Android is a kind of operating system that based on Linux operating system which is designed for the touchscreen mobiles, tablet computers and Smartphone. This is found in 2007 by the Android Inc. Android is now one of the most popular operating system and millions of people use Android Smartphone. Have a look : http://programminghelpbd.blogspot.com/2014/12/android-evolution-interesting-facts-you.html

Right here baby

[anon.adderlan]

Why aren't all you nerds rooting devices and using whatever OS/kernel/apps/bloatware/radio/store you want? So many people here complain endlessly about carriers and poor support.

Because they bought these devices to save time, not waste it on making a device/service they paid for work.

And even with the spare time and ability, installing WhateverOS won't solve their problem unless it reliably supports the features they need (in my case, the sPen).

And even if WhateverOS supports those features, most manufacturers/telecoms claim that such software modifications (even just rooting) void the hardware warranty (a lie in NY, if not the entire US), and refuse to repair/replace the device.

And even if they can add those features to WhateverOS, it still depends on having a hardware spec to target, which most manufacturers won't release.

I guess with enough time and ability you could just reverse engineer the hardware and write your own OS. And I guess with enough money in addition you could just create the hardware yourself too. But how far do you want to go down this rabbit hole? All choices have a cost, and I'd rather be spending my time and money writing software for a device rather than trying to get it to work in the first place.

Re:Right here baby

[radl33t]

Because they bought these devices to save time, not waste it on making a device/service they paid for work.

weird attitude, in conflict with with nerd community I have grown up with on slashdot, which has for 15+ years routinely and actively promoted a hacker-like ethos with respect to one's products, tools, etc.

And even if WhateverOS supports those features, most manufacturers/telecoms claim that such software modifications (even just rooting) void the hardware warranty (a lie in NY, if not the entire US), and refuse to repair/replace the device.

Who cares what they say, on all my devices, even with flags for modification, I've been able to bring it back to factory. Warranty issues really?

I guess with enough time and ability you could just reverse engineer the hardware and write your own OS. And I guess with enough money in addition you could just create the hardware yourself too. But how far do you want to go down this rabbit hole?

That's an easy question. The entire distance my desire, abilities, and time, will take me. What's the problem? We arrive back at my earlier comment, somehow spending an evening to understand the relationship between your phone hardware and software and modifying it to better suit you is made to be some perilous, indefinite journey galaxy fraught with imagined dangers that cause one to sit home on the internet and complain. Actually it was 3 hours of reading, 2 hours of fuck ups, and 1 hour of getting it right, one evening, 14 months ago.

I want to upgrade my phone with lollipop

[Anonymous Coward]

I am using idea ultra smart phone is upgradable to lollipop