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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.
If you want prompt OS updates, don't buy a Samsung. They never promised they'd give you later Android versions.
Samsung Galaxy S5 got Lollipop yesterday.
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.
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...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
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.
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
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?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
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.