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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."
Is the default interface still a butt-ugly clone of iOS devices?
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'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"?
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.
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!
does that make you a Sucker?
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.)
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/
I have an HTC M8 on Sprint and installed Lollipop two weeks ago.
No Inflation Taxation without Representation
"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.
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?
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 :)
Because iPhones have all those things. Well, almost all those things. Okay, none of those things, but they're just so beautiful and expensive everyone will know you're the coolest hipster in the Starbucks if you have one. And that's really what matters.
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.
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.
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.
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.