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Google Announces Android 5.1
An anonymous reader writes: Google has officially announced Android Lollipop 5.1. This is a small update to the mobile operating system, and focuses on stability and performance. The main new features include support for multiple SIM cards, high definition voice calls on supported devices, and the ability to join Wi-Fi networks and manage Bluetooth pairings through Quick Settings. The biggest new feature is "Device Protection." They say, "With Device Protection, your lost or stolen device will remain locked until you sign in with your Google account — even if someone resets your device to factory settings. This feature will be available on most Android phones and tablets shipped with Android 5.1 in addition to Nexus 6 and Nexus 9."
I guess the 2013 Moto X is abandoned then. Fuck. I always bet on the wrong whores.
I hope the Device Protection feature is optional. I'd hate to think my device gets bricked because I delete my Google account or forget the password.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Another Android upgrade I'll never actually see on my own phone, because they're only available on new phones, nobody makes phones with slide-out keyboards anymore, and I'm not going to accept a phone that doesn't have a slide-out keybard, so I'm left just not buying any recent phone. Which I'm fine with anyway, they're cheaper and I don't really *need* any of the new fanciness, but still.
Does Android use systemd yet?
Android 5.0 (or 5.02) hasnt even been released on an awful lot of phones yet. I am writing this on a Motorola Moto G which I'd been led to believe was likely to be one of the first phones to get an upgrade....
I made the mistake of updating my original Nexus 7 to 5.0. What a buggy mess! I quickly put it back to 4.4 and have no intention of updating it any further. Granted that the original 7 is getting very long in the tooth and I don't really expect google to maintain backwards compatibility to old hardware.
It depends on the carrier. Telus released it last month, Rogers this week. But you really really want to stay with Kit Kat. Their new "Material" design is not exactly user-friendly. - especially the black text on a dark grey background for "Cancel", some weird typos, the habit of almost always opening the phone app when I swipe to unlock ... not impressed.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
If you must have a "real" (read: really small) keyboard, just get an iPhone and one of many slide out keyboard cases.
I doubt the combo would be much bigger than what you have...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It is out for the HTC One M8, the unlocked version. It works decently, although all the privacy utilities like XPrivacy and others don't work, so one is left vulnerable until those are fixed.
I own a OnePlus One. Don't have any issues with BS "carrier apps" or anything like that, because there are none (in general, some of the Cyanogen bits are a little 'special' at times).
Sucks that Google hasn't made a requirement for a "clean" version of Android to be made available for major devices. That's where probably 75% or more of the issues come in.
I'll maybe care when it's actually "released".
TFA says "Today we are rolling out..." and "...available on...Nexus 6 and Nexus 9", while https://developers.google.com/... has 5.1 for neither...
This sig left unintentionally blank.
Guessing that's the 1st Generation "G"?
Which US carrier lets you make all these changes? The phones are locked by the Carrier. The Carrier has way too much power in the current ISP relationship. They are the ones that won't let you be an admin. You can always buy a reference device (Nexus and unlock), or make your own.
Their Flagship the M8 is still on 4.4.3 not even 4.4.4
Never buying HTC ever again.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
AFAIK none of them "let you" or "support you" doing it, but let's be honest... And geek of sufficient caliber is going to do it. ;)
For goods sake stop removing features and disabling stuff. There is no point in having an app platform when the apps can do less and less with every new release because you just removed important features from the system.
Android uses to be great when it was in version 2.1 or something, but now every new version gets worse and worse and more bugs are introduced and more stuff breaks.
https://code.google.com/p/andr...
This is ridiculous.
I'm fed up with issues I've had with Google Nexus line Android devices:
1) Nexus 7 first gen. Enable encryption and device becomes superslow due to not having a proper fstrim support.
2) Galaxy Nexus. No more updates after 4.3, not even security updates.
3) Nexus 4. This recent dialer issue. I'm still getting updates but what good are they if they only break things that worked before?
Great idea... if we could get handsets in the US that supported it.
Reprise the theme song and roll the credits!
I'd love it if that was Android's main failing.
Android is buggy, insecure, fractured out the fucking ass, and absolutely anti-user.
From the shitty permissions system to the shitty lack of a file manager to the shitty mountain of built-in, unidentifiable system apps and "services" that auto start for no fucking reason and do who-knows-what at all times with the increasingly-vague permissions to drain your battery and eat up all your RAMs. It's absolutely insane that I have to conjure up some voodoo bullshit to root a device then install a 3rd-party app to wrangle permissions, remove shit I don't want, stop shit from running in the background non-stop, etc.
You should probably get a nexus phone or a flagship then. Or switch to a far simpler phone, like the iPhone.
does that make you a Sucker?
Sucks that Google hasn't made a requirement for a "clean" version of Android to be made available for major devices
you can disable any app, including apps packaged in the firmware. it won't even show up in the launcher after that. that's been in place since 4.0 (or so).
I didn't have any problems with my Nexus 4, but that didn't stop me from creating them by installing bleeding edge Cyanogenmod!
But seriously, install a stable Cyanogenmod. It's not very difficult and you'll probably love it.
Google's Iron Grip on Android
That's the price you pay for believing in your carrier's warranty (Verizon/AT&T?). If you're happy being out of waranty, then just install the updates yourself. (I converted my AT&T M8 to the GPE load, and have been very happy.)
From my experience with the Note3, yeah you can "disable" apps from showing, but not completely. They're still resident in memory most of the time and a number that I wanted to disable, the option to disable was disabled.
After rooting I found that they had cross-linked dependencies. Some of the apps I wanted to keep were dependent upon stuff in apps that I wanted to remove. Freeze/remove some of the carrier crap-ware and other things that weren't so crap broke. :(
My Nexus 7 is quite a bit worse after the 5 upgrade. I need to reboot every couple of days or it will slow to a crawl. Wifi is also dodgy - takes forever to come up after being switched off, and takes a *long* time to connect to new APs.
I'm hoping 5.1 will be better.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
http://xkcd.com/619/
From my experience with the Note3, yeah you can "disable" apps from showing, but not completely. They're still resident in memory most of the time
the "disable" feature that's available on any firmware-based app completely stops the app from running. i use it on my nexus 6 to disable the exchange crap from running in the background. works fine.
if samsung did something to mess with how that works (i'd be surprised if they did, but if you say so), then well, why the heck did you buy a samsung device? that's called just deserts. don't blame android for some terrible crap done by samsung. by the way, you paid 50% for samsung, right?
if people don't support the delivery model they want, how do you expect anything to change? carrier bloated, manufacturer bloated malware infested devices. why? stop falling prey to samsung, et. al's marketing barrage. you're a nerd, you know nexus exists, what's your excuse?
I have an HTC M8 on Sprint and installed Lollipop two weeks ago.
No Inflation Taxation without Representation
Sucks that Google hasn't made a requirement for a "clean" version of Android to be made available for major devices. That's where probably 75% or more of the issues come in.
I agree,
However such restrictions would be incompatible with the open nature of Android. Sadly, carrier and manufacturer crapware is the downside of having an open ecosystem.
But this is exactly what the Nexus phones are meant to combat. I'd like it if Google were to release vanilla firmware for popular phones like the Samsung Galaxy, Note and HTC One, but this would still require manufacturer co-operation.
My last two phones were Nexuses, my previous phones were bought outright and modded.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Yea, I hate how Google stole the draw-down menu, the app drawer, the quick-settings, and the 3-button interface.
Cant they do ANYTHING different, like create a smart watch ecosystem?
"Performance" After how hard it tanked my N7 into the ground I guess anything would be an improvement. I am being very serious here - it ran so bad I just turned it off and slid it under the bed. To be fair, Windows 10 sucks hard on the original Surface Pro too. But at least that was a tech preview and not an actual release.
I'm not blaming Android/Google for anything other than not making a requirement that a "bullshit free" OS load be an option. If there were a firmware from Samsung that didn't have all the carrier/manufacturer mandated extras and BS added I'd be much happier and I'm sure some of the more tech-savvy users would be as well. Most of the people complaining that "Android Sux" are the ones who've never seen or used anything near an AOSP. They're fighting with Motorolla crap or Samsung crap or HTC crap. If Google made it part of the OS licensing that the vendor needed to provide something close to an AOSP load for their devices people could make a choice on using their "Branded Android" install or going with a "Native Android" setup.
As to "Why not Nexus".... Lack of SD card support and "small" internal storage. Tech specs that were (last I looked) a bit behind current flagship devices. In the case of the Note3 purchase: I can SSH into my servers when necessary and actually have a little bit of screen left after the keyboard is exposed because no one wants to make a device with a physical keyboard. And it didn't help that a friend had one of the Nexus phones that was RMA'ed 4 times in one year because the radio was crap. His wife's phone didn't have issues (another Nexus device), his did.
I'm not sure how it's incompatible.
Requirement to be able to include Google Services and Google Play: You will make and provide a method for users of the device to install a build of Android that is untainted by any 3rd party applications in the firmware. They make the device with their standard extras and ship it. They provide links on their website for a download of the "same" firmware without all the extras and the firmware update tools to install it. The burden is then on the user or their designated 3rd party surrogate to flash the firmware to the device. Most people won't bother unless they have a geek relative or have the necessary tech skills to handle it themselves.
Now, I would expect that the Carriers wouldn't want to Warranty Support the devices at that point, but the Manufacturer would still be on the hook as long as you flashed their firmware with their tools. We're still "out of bounds" on certain things, but at least we'd have devices that didn't suck so much...
That's not a requirement, that's an option.
You can buy a lot of Android devices that dont have Google Play and Google Services. Many of these devices are phones and tablets.
The core of Android is built around being open and optional. If you start requiring manufacturers to do something in order to use Android, Android stops being open.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
That's the part that Google Licenses. You can't distribute their Services and Play because those aren't part of AOSP. That's where you put the hinge.
Yes you can download and install and distribute the OS. However most devices that do that aren't really well received. They tend to be low quality cheap knock-offs. Most vendors that sell Android devices need the Google Services and Google Play on their device and have a license to distribute those "Non-Open Source" components. The cheap vendors that are including these parts without proper licensing (and there have been a few, mostly China) are in violation and open to legal action.
Samsung tried that with Google Play Edition devices. They were a flop. It wasn't a big sell giving people a device which didn't work like or have the features of the devices they were used to.
It also heavily depends on the carrier as to what bloat you get. My carrier only adds one app. Samsung on the other hand are the ones responsible for a shitload of others that come with the phone, and I'm not just talking about Samsung's own apps but things like Flipboard, Dropbox etc too.
Hey now, you (and I) may be stuck at 4.3 but we're still getting updates on the stuff that matters. Other than the vulnerable web browser, that is.
Of course, Google Apps updates have made the phone practically unusable, I mean, it was a really fast really slick phone when it was new. Now it's a laggy thing that takes seconds to do anything. Typing on it is not an exercise in frustration as it stalls, catches up, stalls, etc.
And I thought it was only Apple that did that to make you update from your 2 year old iPhone.
Kind of a specific problem, but I hope they actually fixed the stupid "doesn't recognize opus files" bug, given that 5.0 was officially supposed to natively support opus audio.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Does anyone know if Device Protection can work with rooted phones or jailbroken ones?
Or rather, if you set Device Protection on it, and "lost your password", can you root it and use it by installing another rom?
So when did Apple start shipping a filesystem explorer? Oh, right, they don't -- you aren't supposed to look at the filesystem. And there are numerous crap-applications Apple installs and constantly updates that I (and others) simply don't care about. They cannot be removed (system app), nor can they be disabled/hidden; the best you can do is put them in a folder sort-of out of sight.
There are plenty of Android APPS that piss me off, too. Like I need every app I've ever installed to wake up and "check in" when ever I turn on my tablet. That's not Google's fault; that's all on the asshats that wrote the apps.
I've heard some horror stories from people who've had their Google accounts auto-banned due to overzealous spam filters for the Play Store, Adwords and things like that, and been unable to get to speak to a human at Google about it. What happens if you protect your phone so that you need to sign into your Google account, then you lose your Google account?
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Lollypop has so many GUI issues, and none are addressed.
For example, the stock appearance of the settings menu with ultra bright white background cannot be changed. So if you open Settings in any kind of dark place like a movie theater, your car at night, or a bedroom, you eyes GET BLASTED BUT FULL ON ULTRA BRIGHT BULLSHIT that cannot be toned down. Compare to 4.2 and before where the menus where white text on a gray or black background. Worse, there is no way to change this. You are stuck wincing if you need to use the menus in the dark. And you lose all ability to remain private or avoid disturbing others.
The automatic dimming feature -which you might suspect would fix this complaint- does not actually work. In a bright environment, auto dimming dims the screen to unusable. And in a dim environment, it actually makes it so dim you can't see to undo it. But if you turn it off, you get BLASTED by that damn GUI with all it's bright white crap. Auto dimming USED to work.
The "battery is fully charged" info box appears even when the screensaver is running, and you need to do that because the super bright menus and status bars now leave significant image ghosting on the screen. For the first time ever on a mobile device, I have to run the multicolor screensaver AND a burn-in removal app periodically just to remove the hole in the screen where the status bar normally appears. Again, the issue is the overall brightness of the GUI contrasting with the rest of the visual elements.
Those things plus apps crashing, loss of root, needing to be rebooted twice a day which takes about three minutes before the desktop is actually working and usable, awful plummeting battery life, sluggish performance trying to open the dialer -Look, I hate Lollypop. 4.2 and 4.4 were very good versions. I expected better from 5.0. I expected more of the same Android UI. I got some misguided experiment in casual blinding.
For me, iOs is not an option. But instead of feeling like a big Android fan and supporter, I feel like I am getting shafted, And without root and access to the bootloader, I can't even DO anything about it. I am stuck with this thing rather than being a fan in love with it.
Maybe the S6 will be decent and somehow manage to fix these things but nothing I've read mentions any GUI fixes. I'm not sure Google even wants to fix it. Afterall, they have had years to fix the contrast problem in Gmail -look at your inbox from more than few feet away and see if you can tell read and unread messages based on color. Pretty much cannot because new messages are in not very bold black over white and read messages are a slightly less black black over almost the same white. There is almost no contrast difference. You cannot tell at a glance what is going on. This problem is awful on desktop Gmail and only a little less awful on mobile mainly because you are obviously closer to the mobile screen.
Google supposedly has GUI scientists and such but they don't see to put any thought into these things. It is frustrating. Yes I will keep using Google. They are wiring my neighborhood for Google Fiber so, yeah, I am on board. But I may not be using any Android devices by the time they get to my house this year.
Sig for hire.
does it work?
would you like new UI better?
on tablets I don't like the double drawer shit for example.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Ever since you screwed the pooch with that "CCTV = charged coupled TV" nonsense, I can't take anything you write with any seriousness. Plus I think their design teams probably know more about user interface design than you do :)
Yes, I completely agree, especially about being buggy like no other piece of software (except maybe Adobe stuff).
However, there is a clear lack of alternatives. iOS is a walled garden, and Windows may be a lot nicer in many ways, but is distinctly short of apps.
Android did the skeumorphic thing first. If anything iOS is aping Android these days with stuff like skeumorphism, swipe down notifications etc.
Apart from that choice is good. Personally I prefer the vanilla experience, or the CM one (which is a relatively light enhancements). The worst replacement I've seen is the one from Huawei which decided that the all apps view and the personizable desktops should be combined into a single thing creating the most unusable experience I've seen in any smart phone.
And of course all that baked in crapware means you won't be getting firmware / security updates for your phone in a timely fashion, if ever.
I can neither remove nor disable Evernote or Flipboard on my Note 3. Tmobile US edition with Android 4.3, 4.4, and now 5.0.
How do I *disable* "Google Search" on a Nexus 5? Every time I *stop* it, it restarts itself.
Google has made it quite aggressive in not wanting to die.
The Galaxy Nexus developer community at XDA looks surprisingly vibrant considering its age, with a decent selection of Lollipop and tasty kernels. Many devices may be left out in the cold, but the Galaxy Nexus apparently is *not* one of them.
I personally really liked lollipop (5.0) on my Nexus 6, after upgrading from Kit Kat on a S3. I've heard so many complaints about the new GUI, but I like material design. Everything is snappy, I get good battery life, I can switch between apps fairly quickly. I even got an OTA upgrade to 5.0.1 and it was barely noticeable. At first I was a little freaked out about not having 'silent mode' but now I've just gotten used to interruptions, which after you get used to the functionallity, it actually offers more options about controlling your sound. Hopefully I'll get 5.1 OTA and get those new features, and maybe some bugs get fixed. That would be enough for me.
I have Lollipop on my M8 now. I don't like it.
One annoyance was the app overview now defaults to Rolodex mode along with half composed emails, web pages etc.
Luckily this can be switched back to grid view (not an option as I understand it with other vendors).
The main unfixable annoyance for me is the head-up notifications on the lock screen. There is no combination of show / don't show / hide private that does what I want. The icons in the status bar were perfect for me before.
I have encountered nothing that I consider an improvement.
you're a nerd, you know nexus exists, what's your excuse?
My pockets are too small.
Mod parent up, my HTC M8 got 5.0.1 months ago on the O2 network.
I think it depends on the carrier as well as the manufacturer.
if samsung did something to mess with how that works (i'd be surprised if they did, but if you say so)
I'm pretty certain disabling app-disabling would cause the device to fail the compliance test suite. There's a test that's supposed to check that.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
In the same boat with my N4. Glad to hear not being able to use the phone part of a smartphone is considered a 'small defect'.
I have a Nexus 7 v 2012 and mistakenly updated to the various Android 5.x.x versions. What a mistake as many earlier posters have noted. I end up with interminable boot ups that vary from time to time as to what's happening, the device is slower than a turtle walking through mud and some apps completely fail to work. The problem with the "downgrade" to 4.4.4 is that it's complicated and as I understand it removes any and all apps and data that might be on the device. If Google wants my respect they will come up with an easy way of going back to KitKat 4.4.4 without removal of apps and data. Or come up with a version of 5 that removes all the problems generated by going from 4.4.4 to 5.x.x. Horror of horrors, I'm even thinking of taking a look at an iPad mini or and iPhone 6 +. Gasp!
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
Me too, but if the 2012 N7 performance under 5.0.2 is any indication, maybe we don't want it. (Aside from screen size, hardware specs are not so different-- 1GB RAM, 1.2ghz quad-core...) I hope they will skip us straight to 5.1. Unfortunately based on what other commenters here are saying, it still may not be good enough.
There's worthless if stolen as a phone, but still quite useful for parts. Similar to vehicles, it's not uncommon for more "professional" thiefs to disassemble an item shortly after theft and sell the stripped parts. An LCD+digitizer is still worth money, as are various other components, and like the tires/engine/etc from a stolen vehicle it's a lot easier to unload the pieces than the full item (as a relative of mine who was the victim of a vehicle theft recently discovered).
Nice to see that they're finally catching up, introducing features that I've had on my BlackBerry for years.
Every time I *stop* it
i'm not talking about killing the process. i'm talking about going into settings > apps > [app] > disable.
on my n6, there's no "google search" app. there is an app called "google play services" which is the heart of google. there's a big "disable" button right there for me.
then that's something samsung did for you. any lesson to be learned here?
Disabling isn't the same as removing. It's still there, unnecessarily eating up space.
the "space" it's eating is completely unusable for any other purpose. the binary exists in /system which is a read-only partition. that's why you can't physically remove the APK.
Worse than that, if you do use that app you will incur a double penalty as soon as you install an update.
no you don't see above.
And of course all that baked in crapware means you won't be getting firmware / security updates for your phone in a timely fashion, if ever.
the existence of an APK installed into /system has zero impact on your manufacturer's ability to roll an updated ROM. it has everything to do with the customizations they make to the firmware itself.
your pockets are big enough to purchase an HTC, samsung, etc. premium device, but not a discounted nexus? even the Nexus 6 is $150+ less than it's equivalent samsung counterpart.
on my n6, there's no "google search" app
Yes there is. It's just not listed as an app because it's baked in hard and called something like "com.unintelligible.android.trololo". You can't truly see it, identify it, or manage it.
The 5.0 added a requirement for a G+ account even to the Gallery app, so one needs to replace it with a 3rd party app. 5.0 also brought a dozen or so new useless Google apps to device, which are uninstallable. Or one can cosmetically uninstall/disable them, but the Google play will dig them back in whenever a update form them arises. I was a happy Nexus 5 user until I happened to install the 5.0. It seems that Andoid 5.0 was made in desperate attempt to get users to their G+ service.
no, there's not. unless the system is hiding that process from the list of running processes and installed apps.
As to "Why not Nexus".... Lack of SD card support and "small" internal storage. Tech specs that were (last I looked) a bit behind current flagship devices. In the case of the Note3 purchase: I can SSH into my servers when necessary and actually have a little bit of screen left after the keyboard is exposed because no one wants to make a device with a physical keyboard. And it didn't help that a friend had one of the Nexus phones that was RMA'ed 4 times in one year because the radio was crap. His wife's phone didn't have issues (another Nexus device), his did.
nexus 6 has a slightly larger screen than the note, it costs $150 less, and has a 64GB option. it's tech specs were top of the line when it was released (they may still be). i've owned a nexus one, galaxy nexus, nexus 10, nexus 7 1st and 2nd gen, and a nexus 6. the only problem i've had is w/ the nexus 10's wifi (and guess what, that's made by samsung).
if you need things like SD card that almost no one else wants, then you are limiting your options. that's just something you have to live with. seems like wiring UMS or connecting to a NAS, or cloud solutions would be workable options.
No, my pockets aren't big enough to fit any of the latest monstrosities, but I happened to want a new Nexus phone. I've still got a Galaxy Nexus, which is about as large as I can comfortably fit in my pocket, and it's getting a little long in the tooth.
I was hoping for a Nexus 6 mini, but no such luck.
the "space" it's eating is completely unusable for any other purpose. the binary exists in /system which is a read-only partition. that's why you can't physically remove the APK.
The point is that partition would be 30MB smaller if it didn't contain the Facebook in the first place. Throw in twitter, some crappy mobile office suite, some antivirus software, some cloud save service and a bunch of other junk and it might be closer to 100MB of wasted space.
no you don't see above.
Yes it does. 30MB masked out and another 30MB+ for the replacement. That's just one app that I assume most people would keep.
the existence of an APK installed into /system has zero impact on your manufacturer's ability to roll an updated ROM. it has everything to do with the customizations they make to the firmware itself.
Of course it does. The network operator (or whomever they contract to support their phones) have to receive a (tested) firmware update image from the manufacturer, extract it, throw in all their own changes & apps, compress it, test it again, and roll it out. That could add weeks or months to the process. It quite obviously requires more effort to test, and it reduces the chances that you'll get updates at all - perhaps Vodafone or whoever only supports a phone for 18 months even if the manufacturer is pushing out more updates or security fixes.
I think that's called Moto X. Not /quite/ stock Android, but not so far off.