The moment Android fans had been waiting for has finally arrived! Google has announced the release of Android 5.0 Lollipop - the latest version of the world's most popular mobile platform. Google is throwing in their latest OS with their new debutants: the Nexus 6 smartphone, Nexus 9 tablet and the Nexus Player streaming device. For those of you with the Nexus 4, 5, 7, 10 and Google Play Edition devices, Google will be reaching out to you in the coming weeks!
Google's next big release of Android, currently simply known as Android L is only a short time away from release and it's certain to undergo a name change before landing on the phones and tablets of users around the globe. In order to follow along with the current naming convention of choosing a name based on desserts that begin with the next letter in a sequence, Google only has so many options to choose from.
Google makes a habit of coinciding major new versions of Android with a new smartphone release, and with Android L having already been unleashed at I/O earlier on this year, we're now waiting on the successor to the Nexus 5. Although widely presumed to be called the Nexus 6, for rather obvious reasons, it now looks as though the next-gen handset will be called the Nexus X as Google tries to avoid any copyright issues, but despite the name-change, the actual device still looks set to impress us with some beastly specs. Today, we've gotten wind of some new details, as well as some more leaked info pertaining to Android L, and below, you can get up to speed.
Google’s unique nomenclature for its Android operating system has always been something of interest to even the most staunch opponents of the platform. The Mountain View company opted for an unprecedented culture of naming Android versions after various desserts from around the globe, and so far, we’ve seen the likes of Éclair, Froyo, Jelly Bean, and KitKat, to name a few. The next iteration might be just around the corner, and it’s the time for the letter L, and Android L is what Google has been using in all its references to the next Android version as well. Today, however, new evidence points towards L standing for Lemon Meringue Pie.
Google's Android L, which the search giant took the unprecedented step of launching at I/O this time around, offers a bunch of improvements over KitKat. Notably, it's laden with an all-new "Material Design,” but aside from tweaking the aesthetics, there are plenty of enhancements on the functionality side of things. As it has just emerged, multi-user support is also in the offing for smartphones, and given how families and groups like to share devices, seems a natural progression that perhaps should have arrived much earlier.
At the I/O Developers Conference, Google took the opportunity to unearth several new products, and among them was Android L, the next major release of the company's flagship mobile OS. Much was made at the time, and since, of the so-called 'Material Design' that would see the the interface overhauled from the ground up with layering and other effects helping to make the operating system feel more alive and active. The UI, it was also said, would be a lot more clean, and below, you can catch a pretty decent glimpse of how some of the search company's own apps like apps like YouTube, Gmail and Maps may eventually look.
The next major version of Android, dubbed as ‘L’ (Lollipop?) was announced by Google at its I/O developer conference in San Francisco. Android L brought with it a ton of new changes, most of which are for developers. But the user-facing end got a neat facelift too, and as ever, we took the latest OS from the search giant for a spin on a Nexus 5, and couldn’t help comparing it with last year’s offering, Android KitKat.
Google's new Android L may only be at preview stage, with the fact that it hasn't even been given a proper name yet being a testament to this, but nevertheless, we're already seeing some encouraging signs of improvements that have been made. Namely, the company is shooting for an all-new "Material Design" language, which is set to give the interface a more layered, vibrant feel, and although we're still quite away from the end user release, I'm sure many of you cannot wait to run Android L on your devices. If you don't fancy going ahead and installing the preview on the Nexus 7 or Nexus 5, then thankfully, there's a theme floating about that allows you to achieve a similar look on your current handset.
As promised, Google rolled out the Android L SDK on Thursday, and for those looking to flash the developer preview software onto their Nexus 7 (2013, Wi-Fi) or Nexus 5, the process isn't actually all that arduous. Below, we've outlined all of the steps in one easy-to-follow, concise tutorial, so if you want to take a sneak peek at what Google's been working on, join us after the fold.
When Google announced Android L at Google I/O, one of the software's biggest headline new features was its heads-up notifications. Allowing developers to give their apps notifications that fall down from the top of the screen rather than simply living in the status bar, heads-up notifications are similar to the way iOS handles incoming notifications, and are surely an improvement over what came before. Unfortunately, with the early versions of Android L only available for Nexus devices, everyone else is left out in the cold.