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Android 7.1 To Roll Out To Nexus Devices in December; Preview Goes Out This Month (engadget.com)

Posted by msmash on from the android-delights dept.

Google said today it will roll out Android 7.1 to a range of Nexus devices -- including Nexus 6 -- later this year (December). A developer preview of Android 7.1 will be available to enthusiasts later this month. From an Engadget report: They also confirmed what 7.1 will bring to the table. Aside from Daydream VR support, most of the new features focus on giving developers more options to spruce up their apps' functionality. First, they can now make custom shortcuts, much like the ones popping up in iOS via 3D Touch. There's also support for image keyboards so users can insert stickers or GIFs within apps. For carriers and calling apps, 7.1 has APIs for multi-endpoint calling and telephony configuration. Lastly, developers can now route users to a Settings page to free up storage space by deleting unused files.

26 comments

  1. Stability and performance? by junner518 · · Score: 2

    I don't need more features. I want a functional tablet. Source: Have Nexus 9 that crashes almost daily after 7 update.

    1. Re:Stability and performance? by hawguy · · Score: 1

      I don't need more features. I want a functional tablet.

      Source: Have Nexus 9 that crashes almost daily after 7 update.

      And I don't want "stickers or GIFs" in my keyboard app -- in fact, I'd really like to drop the emoticon button from the keyboard and replace it with a more useful key.

    2. Re:Stability and performance? by dinfinity · · Score: 1

      Install another keyboard app. There are plenty of them.

  2. Battery drain fix? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But will it address the battery drain issue that's been plaguing Nexus 6 and 6P devices since the preview in May?

    Android 7 is great, except for the fact that my phone is almost dead by noon.....

    1. Re:Battery drain fix? by Lothsahn · · Score: 2

      I get better battery life on my Nexus 6 with Android 7 than before. Not much, mind you, but it's a little better.

      That said, there are some issues... Cell standby consumed 880 mAh with the radio active for 10s. Somehow, I think that's got to be wrong...

      I agree, though--the #1 thing I want is better battery life. And what's crazy is that I disabled the Google location services on my Nexus S and I get 4 DAYS of battery life between charges now (screen off nearly 100%). With Google Location services on, it only lasts ~6 hours. So I suspect Google itself is at fault for a lot of the battery drain.

      --
      -=Lothsahn=-
    2. Re:Battery drain fix? by jrumney · · Score: 2

      This happened to me the first day after updating my 6P. Then I booted into recovery and cleared the cache (after some research into possible solutions). Since then the battery has lasted all day. Still worse compared with 6.0.1, which would have lasted until about noon the next day if I'd gone without charging (7.0 is giving me battery warnings around midnight now), but acceptable for someone who basically just charges their phone overnight.

    3. Re:Battery drain fix? by jrumney · · Score: 1

      When I got 5 hours battery life after updating to 7.0, Google Services was in 3rd spot at 4%, behind Android OS at 10% and Android System at 55%. So yeah, Google themselves are very much at fault for the Android 7 battery drain issues.

  3. Including Nexus 6... by alexo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... but excluding Nexus 5, which does not get an update to Android 7 even though its hardware is perfectly capable of running it.

    Ain't planned obsolescence grand?

    1. Re: Including Nexus 6... by Lothsahn · · Score: 1

      There's actually a pretty good writeup on this: http://www.androidauthority.co...

      Basically, the TL;DR; version is that the most likely cause for Snapdragon 800/801 phones not getting Nougat is that they likely cannot pass the Android compatibility tests for Nougat for AES performance. They can't pass because the minimum specs are likely higher and they lack the necessary dedicated encryption hardware.

      Nobody wanted to point fingers at Google, but the evidence seems to implicate them. Google needs to relax the compatibility specs for upgrading existing devices. Any device which passed the specs at release for a previous Android release should be grandfathered in as much as possible. We have enough problems with Android fragmentation from carriers and manufacturers--Google needs to help, not hurt.

      --
      -=Lothsahn=-
    2. Re: Including Nexus 6... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah right, they always find excuses. For Galaxy Nexus it was SoC vendor not playing nicely with them, not sure what the excuse for obsolescence of Nexus 4 was and not this for Nexus 5. Ridiculous.

      Performance concerns didn't stop Google from releasing device encryption feature on 1st gen Nexus 7 that couldn't even handle it properly.

    3. Re: Including Nexus 6... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Lack of a stable driver API is a big factor in this.

    4. Re: Including Nexus 6... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So they should make that kind of mistake again?

    5. Re: Including Nexus 6... by Tony+Isaac · · Score: 1

      Not to mention Nexus 7 tablets, which also won't get the upgrade.

    6. Re: Including Nexus 6... by emag · · Score: 1

      Hell, I'm still waiting for 7.0 on my Nexus 6. My wife's Nexus 5X has already gotten a Nougat update (past the initial 7.0). My Nexus 7 2013 LTE last got the August security update to Marshmallow. I suspect that I'm going to have to start looking into alternative ROMs, especially because the Pixel line, which I was hoping to upgrade to, will cost me about $900 to get the storage and resolution I want at middling specs. I'd rather go 3rd party and use my N6 until it dies (hopefully not the way my N4 did, with a smashed screen).

      --
      "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
    7. Re: Including Nexus 6... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Linus do accept drivers into Linux.
      Linux 4.8 shipped with new and updated drivers and so will the upcoming Linux 4.9. Intel do work upstream in the official open source software and they do make their devices easy to use. The oldest Intel devices I have in daily production is more than ten years. The devices just work because they are standardised, well documented, and the source for the drivers are upstreamed into the main official Linux kernel shipped by Linus.
      The major customers needs to push the suppliers of ARM devices to work upstream.

    8. Re: Including Nexus 6... by wbr1 · · Score: 1

      I have the N6 and have 7.0. I got it OTA, but if you don't want to wait get WUG nexus root toolkit. Unlock your bootloader and install the official ROM. It is really easy.

      --
      Silence is a state of mime.
  4. Google Apologizes for delay by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Google Spokesman Dodgy McTaxDodger added: "We apologize for the delay. The USB connector didn't break after 4 insertions and the glass panel didn't fall out when you breathed on it. This is unacceptable. We have a poor image to maintain. In addition it didn't run slower with each OS upgrade, and there wasn't sufficient fragmentation so we decided to split the Nexus 9 into 5 submodels, each subtly incompatible with the next."

  5. Linux, you're our only hope by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Help! We desperately need a pure Linux distro running on common cellphones. No snoopy android crap. No universal byte-code crap. Just free and open OS running free and open applications. Is there anything like that bout there? I really want to throw google off my phone but there isn't really anywhere else to go.

    1. Re:Linux, you're our only hope by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There's Ubuntu Phon.....hahahahaha

  6. Portrait windows on landscape screens by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I betcha it brings portrait windows on landscape screens, and landscape windows on portrait screens.

    When you open a phone app on a tablet with a bigger screen, its unusable currently, the phone app might force portrait, the WHOLE screen rotates and even if you're plugged into a keyboard case, the stupid OS will rotate the screen. What's needed is a vertical portrait window, the approximate size of a phone screen should open running the phone app in portrait on the larger landscape tablet screen.

    Such a small change is STILL not supported by Android 7.0. But it's expected to finally get fixed in 7.1.

    Android is currently unusable on larger tablets because of this stupid shortcoming. The Android model since 3.0 has been that the app should have a different interface to to take advantage of the larger screen. Very few apps will support two SEPARATE interfaces, that the user is supposed to learn both in order to get a tablet.

    Now that they can *finally* support side by side apps (the underlying OS always did, but they changed it to make the window full screen inspired by the iPhone), they can do this small tweak without problem.

    1. Re:Portrait windows on landscape screens by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When you open a phone app on a tablet with a bigger screen ...

      Didn't you get the memo? Tablets are dead.

  7. Are permissions fixed yet? by kaka.mala.vachva · · Score: 0

    I finally moved away from Android this year - mainly because I still could not turn off permissions per app. I could not, for example, allow GPS for Google Maps and disable it for Yelp. I know Cyanogenmod has something similar to this, but I cannot install Cyanogenmod on my work phone.

    1. Re:Are permissions fixed yet? by Kkloe · · Score: 1

      permissions was fixed\implemented in 6, for phones not between 4.4.2 and 6 you can use app obs starter

  8. Moderators... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This needs to be moderated as "Funny". After all, who, in their right mind, actually wants a functional, stable OS for anything? Lame, flashy, unproductive features are all you need with bugs galore.

  9. no cheap nexus anymore by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Thanks google for doubling the price of the nexus. The pixel now costs more tha $600, when the nexus 5x was offered for half of that.

    What other good phones with pure android are there?