Android 5.0 Lollipop officially announced with new Nexus products
Today is a big day in the world of Android. Google announced via it’s blog the newest and biggest version of Android: Android 5.0, or Android Lollipop. There is a lot to sort through here, so stick with us as we go through all the new features coming to an Android device near you.
First, Android Lollipop will fit screens of all sizes: from smartwatches, to smartphones, to tablets, to automobile screens, and your TV. With this, Android Lollipop will not only be fluid across all your devices, but can sync together allowing you to stop in one place and pick up in another. So if you’re watching a movie on your Android TV device, and want to finish in bed, you can pick up where you left off on your tablet. If you’re listening to a song on your phone, and get in your car, you can pick up the song and continue on your way.
Next is Material Design, which was previewed at Google I/O. This brings fluidity and motion onto your device that makes everything fit together. We’ve seen a lot of this already through some of Google’s updated apps, but Android Lollipop will tie it all together in the OS. Each device will provide the information you need the best way it will work. It has more responsive, natural motion, with visual elements that feel familiar. On your watch, that means a snippet of an email. On your tablet that means the message is shown alongside your message list.
Android Lollipop will have the ability to control notifications at a much greater level. You can access and reply to messages from your lock screen, and you can set what notifications come through at a certain time. Whether that’s getting priority messages based on the person and content of the message only during sleep, or silencing everything during a meeting. Calls will also not interrupt while watching a video, allowing you to ignore the call or accept it without pausing the video.
Android Lollipop will also have much better battery life, with a battery saver feature giving you up to 90 minutes more usage. It also provides greater management of your battery, by letting you know the estimated time until your device dies, or estimated time it will be fully charged.
Android Lollipop will have better security, with a guest mode, and a special pin that you can give to your friends with their own unique profile. Android Smart Lock allows you to pair your device to another trusted device to allow easy unlocking. Encryption is enabled out of the box, and there is better protection against vulnerabilities.
Quick Settings has been updated, allowing you to view them with two swipes down from the top of the screen. New controls like flashlight, hotspot, screen rotation, and cast screen control. Easier on and off toggles for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and location (no more long pressing?). Manual brightness control will now be built-in, and adaptive brightness will adjust more intuitively.
Connectivity is improved with Android Lollipop, allowing seamless transition from Wi-Fi to cellular connection. Also, there is improved Bluetooth connectivity, with a new BLE peripheral mode.
ART is now the new runtime (instead of dalvik), with faster and more fluid performance. There is also support for 64-bit devices (like the Nexus 9).
Also a big update is a bunch of new Media enhancements and features. These include lower latency audio input, multi-channel audio stream mixing, USB audio support for microphones speakers etc. OpenGL ES 3.1 brings console level graphics and performance to your device.
Mobile photographers rejoice! A slew of new features include capture of full resolution frames at 30 fps, support for raw formats, control of capture settings for the sensor, lens, and flash per individual frame, and capturing of metadata like noise models. Also, there’s new “video technology with support for HEVC main profile to allow for UHD 4K 10-bit video playback, tunneled hardware video decoding to save power and improved HLS support for streaming”.
OK Google has been updated, allowing for more support of waking your device by your voice (needs digital signal processing support). The site also says “Talk to Google on the go to get quick answers, send a text, get directions and more”. Not quite sure what that means as this is already possible, but more than likely it’s greatly improved with greater control.
Along with all of this Accessibility has been improved, more languages added (15 more to be exact), and device set up has been improved with the ability to tap a new device with a current device by NFC and be done. Tap &pay is improved, print preview and page range support, “Revamped display for battery, Bluetooth, data usage, and Wi-Fi settings and new search functionality”, easier sharing, when hardware supports it the device will wake up when you pick it up or tap the screen twice, and “Improved hardware keyboard accessory support including support for multilingual, emoji input, search key, and improved app and system key chords”.
*Takes a deep breath* Wow, that was a lot to go through! This is easily the biggest update they have ever had. On their blog announcement, Sundar Pichai mentions there are over 5,000 APIs for developers. Are you ready for this? I’m not sure I am!
With the announcement of this, they also announced the Nexus 6, made by Motorola, the Nexus 9, made by HTC, and the Nexus Player made by ASUS. If you visit one of those pages (which will be listed below) you will see they are sticking with the Nexus 5 as well (presumably for those that don’t want a 6″ screen on their phone). Preorders for the Nexus 9 and Player start October 17, and will be released November 3, while the Nexus 6 will be available for preorder later this month, and released sometime in November.
Are you excited about all this?
sources: Official Google Blog announcement, Android, Nexus 6, Nexus 9, Nexus Player, Nexus 5
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Nexus 9 keyboard cover gives Surface Pro competition
The Nexus 9 is already shaping up to be a top notch tablet, but with the addition of the keyboard accessory it can be so much more. The keyboard measures 320 x 228 x 5mm, includes a 450 mAh battery and attaches to the tablet magnetically. The keyboard is your standard 5 row type, which includes a dedicated number row and dedicated emoji keys. While the Nexus 9 is not as powerful as a Microsoft Surface Pro, the combination of the tablet and keyboard could be a powerful productivity tool at lower price. Price and availability for the keyboard cover hasn’t been announced yet, but I would imagine that we hear soon, we’ll keep you updated!
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The Google Nexus 9 official with pre-orders starting Oct. 17th
Part 2 of Android Christmas is here. The Google Nexus 9 is now also officially announced and the HTC-manufactured tablet is nothing less than we had imagined. While it has seen less leaks than its smartphone stablemate, the Nexus 9 cuts an impressive figure with matte black and that 9-inch display. What was leaked, like the internals, are much more accurate, which is definitely a good thing. Powered by a NVIDIA Tegra K1 chip (with 192-cores) at 2.3GHz and 2GB of RAM the Nexus 9 looks to be a worthy successor to the large format Nexus tablet, the last of which is the well outdated Nexus 10.
The Nexus 9 officially carriers Android 5.0 Lollipop to consumers hands on the 8.9-inch IPS LCD display at 1048×1536. Being HTC designed you get the dual front facing BoomSound speakers that many have grown to love quite a bit. The Nexus 9 also carries along a 8MP rear cameras, 1.6MP front camera, 6,700 mAh battery and is showing either 16GB or 32GB internal storage offerings. Power wise the Nexux 9 packs a 6,700 mAh battery into its ultra slim 7.95mm housing with an estimated life expectancy of 9.5 hours of Wi-Fi browsing. As you can see in the above image, the Nexus 9 will be offered in three color variants, Indigo Black, Lunar White and Sand.
The Nexus 9 announcement via Google’s Blog doesn’t offer a price tag just yet though. I didn’t find anything on HTC’s site, at least not while I was looking, that offered up concrete pricing. Previous rumors stated the 16GB would be $399 and the 32GB would be $499. I will keep searching for concrete pricing from Google or HTC to that effect throughout the day. Be sure to sign-up for email news alerts from Google about the Nexus 9 at the bottom of the tablets overview page.
Source: Google Blog | Nexus 9 page
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Google announces the ASUS Nexus Player, first commercially available Android TV set-top box
Yesterday when the fancy little videos from Google came out with all the Androidify characters I laughed. They were cute, funny and just plain awesome. Two of the videos made sense, the third, where the guy pushes out a speaker and starts a party, got me thinking. It made me wonder if Google had another device up its sleeves that didn’t get daily leak treatment. It did make its rounds in a set of benchmark reports though. Meet the Asus built Nexus Player.
The Nexus Player is the first commercially available Android TV device to launch. It is powered by an Intel Atom quad-core processor clocked at 1.8GHz with imagination PowerVR Series 6 graphics 2d/3d engine. It offers 1GB of RAM and 8GB internal storage. It is powered by a typical DC power supply with HDMI out at 1920 x 1080@60Hz. You can see a hand-held physical remote that resembles the Fire TV remote a little, with fewer buttons and is also voice enabled. That allows you to search and do with just your voice. The physical set-top box disk and remote appear to be the primary purchase option as that is all that is listed in the “in-box” section of the spec outlines. That makes the dual joystick wielding gaming controller an add-on accessory.
If you are concerned with size, the Nexus Player dimensions are just 120 x 120 x 20 mm. Connection wise, beyond power and HDMI, you have Bluetooth 4.1 and Wi-Fi 802.11ac 2×2 (MIMO) and a Micro USB 2.0 port.
In addition to the device operating as a standalone unit with its own apps, Play Store access and other functions, it is also Google Cast Ready. That means you can cast your device content through the Nexus PLayer just as you do with the Chromecast. The Nexus Player falls in-line with the Nexus 9, as in the pre-order date for the device is set for October 17th with a price tag of $99 and is listed to be in store for purchase November 3rd.
Source: Google blog | Nexus Player overview page
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Google makes Android 5.0 Lollipop official; headed to Nexus 4, 5, 7, 10 and GPE devices in coming weeks
It is certainly a big day in the Android world. Google announced the Nexus 6, the Nexus 9 and the Nexus Player. All three are beautiful devices that many of us are eager to put to work in our lives. All the new devices were announced with Android 5.0, or Lollipop. Which is Android L’s official name. Sorry Lava Cake and Lemon Drop fans.
What’s new in Lollipop? A whole bunch of stuff that many already know about thanks to Google I/O and the developer preview. Material Design is the big key visual element that the new OS brings to the table. It also brings along over 5,000 APIs for developers to use towards making other products play nicer together. Like Google Fit and such. There is the new notification control, the trusted Bluetooth Connections, guest user modes, battery saver mode and few other goodies. Google outline much of it at Android.com.
While Lollipop is great news, even better news is where the new version of Android will land in terms of the previous Nexus family. There are no specific dates mentioned yet, but Google does note that the Nexus 4, 5, 7 and 10, along with Google Play Edition device will all see Lollipop updates in the coming weeks. I am sure that is going to make Nexus 4 owners particularly happy.
Source: Google Blog
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Motorola plans to update 9 devices with Android 5.0 Lollipop in near future
By now I am sure you are all aware that the Motorola Nexus 6 has been announced. It is slated for a late October pre-order date with availability in November. Google has confirmed that Android L is indeed Android 5.0 Lollipop and the new Nexus 6, Nexus 9 and Nexus Player will all run it out of the box. They also confirmed the Nexus 4, 5, 7 and 10 will get Lollipop along side the Google Play Edition devices as well. During the flurry of information this morning Motorola also put out an additional announcement that pertained to a number of their current devices on the market and Android 5.0.
As it sits currently, Motorola plans to move a total of 9 devices to the new OS eventually. I only say eventually because they have to wit until Google officially makes Android 5.0 available. While it is what is install out of the box on the new Nexus line, it still isn’t really real yet. Once that happens Motorola can officially start pushing updates to devices. The timing per device and carrier will vary, of course. Here is the current list of device that Motorola has plans to update.
- Moto X (both 1st and 2nd gen)
- Moto G (both 1st and 2nd gen)
- Moto G with 4G LTE
- Moto E
- Droid Ultra
- Droid Maxx
- Droid Mini
I am quite sure they will add the Droid Turbo to the list as soon as that device is announced. You can keep tabs on each device, and any new devices to make the cut, over at the Motorola Software update page that is dedicated to Android 5.0. We will be keeping tabs on Lollipop news as it hits for different devices, so expect to see updates for a while.
Source: Motorola
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Samsung announces its latest “Galaxy Gifts” campaign for the Note 4 & Note Edge
It’s no secret that smartphone manufacturers often use freebies to encourage us to adopt their latest products. More often than not, these include pointless applications and services that we wouldn’t entertain even if the developers themselves paid us to do so, but very occasionally there’s a few hidden gems.
Making its second appearance in the concealed jewel category is Samsung’s “Galaxy Gift Package,” which, for those unaware, is a bunch of apps and services up for grabs for select models in the Galaxy range. The South Korean company first launched the scheme back in March alongside its former flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S5, and to be completely honest, we were pretty impressed with what it had to offer.
Today Samsung announced that it’s re-launching the program to celebrate International availability of the Galaxy Note 4 and Galaxy Note Edge.
This time the gifts are divided into four groups: Productivity, Entertainment, News & Reading and Lifestyle & Others — all four sections offer a fantastic combination of applications, services and deals.
Samsung’s full list of promotional goodies can be seen below:
As you can see, there’s a fair degree of value here, so if you’re planning to pick up a Galaxy Note 4 or Galaxy Note Edge later this month, be sure to check them out. To find out more — hit the source link below.
Source: Samsung
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Nexus 6 with Android Lollipop officially unveiled, pre-orders start late October for $649
Well it’s official folks. The Nexus from Motorola and Google has finally been announced. There really isn’t much too surprising with it other than the price.
As far as specs go, the Nexus 6 has a 5.96-inch Quad HD (2560 x 1440) display at 493 ppi, a 2.7 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 805 processor, Adreno 420 GPU, 32 or 64 GB of storage, a 13 MP rear camera with OIS and HDR+, 2 MP front-facing camera, dual front-facing stereo speakers, a 3,220 mAh battery, and Android 5.0 Lollipop. It also has Motorola’s Turbo Charging technology, which means you can charge an additional 6 hours of battery life in just 15 minutes.
Now we get to the price and availability. Pre-orders will start late October for a starting price of $649, which we presume is the 32 GB version. You will have your choice of Midnight Blue or Cloud White for colors.
Google also went on to announce that all five major carriers will offer the phone as well. That means AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, and yup, you guessed it, Verizon Wireless.
Come comment on this article: Nexus 6 with Android Lollipop officially unveiled, pre-orders start late October for $649
HTC’s Nexus 9 is official, complete with brushed metal design and BoomSound speakers
HTC’s often-rumored Nexus 9 tablet is official, and it looks like one of the best Android tablets we’ve ever seen. The device sports an 8.9-inch screen big enough to enjoy movies and games but still small enough to carry around throughout the day. The specs are top notch, too, including a Tegra K1 CPU, 2048×1536 resolution on the screen, and 2 GB of RAM. It’s also equipped with HTC’s fantastic BoomSound speakers, too.
Software is pretty self-explanatory; you’ll get Android 5.0 with no OEM modifications, and it’s a Nexus device, so updates will come quickly from Google. The tablet also looks like it’s getting quite a bit of accessory support, too, as Google is already showing off an official keyboard case for the device. If you’re looking for an Android tablet for true productivity, this might be the way to go.
The Nexus 9 will release on November 3rd in a few different variants. The 16 GB model runs $399 while the 32 GB costs $479, and both will come in white and black. Google and HTC plan on releasing a sand color and LTE version of the tablet later this year, too.
What are your thoughts on the Nexus 9? Is it worth the premium price tag over the Nexus 7 or other cheaper Android tablets?
source: Google
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Google’s Nexus Player is Google’s first Android TV device
We had a chance to see Android TV in action back at Google I/O, and now it’s finally going to be available for all. We also didn’t think Google would brand their own set-top box, but they are. The Nexus Player, made by ASUS, is Google’s first Android TV device, and their first set-top box of any kind.
Going with the round shape, it looks a little different from other streaming devices on the market. It packs a 1.8GHz Quad Core, Intel Atom processor, support for 802.11ac 2×2 (MIMO), and HDMI out. It’s also Google Cast ready. Surprisingly, it doesn’t have an HDMI input like past Google TV boxes.
It comes with a remote control that allows for voice commands and simple commands. The pictured game controller doesn’t appear to come with the unit.
Android TV aims to take over the living room with a plenty of apps and games. Apps suchs as Netflix, Songza, Plex, Hulu Plus, and so much more will be available. In addition, many games will be available that can allow for online multiplayers and achievements.
No price was given, but pre-orders will start this Friday, October 17, with in store availability by November 3rd.
source: Google / Nexus Player
exus Player
Remote with voice search
Power adapter
2 AAA batteries
Quick-start guide
Warranty, Safety and Regulatory booklet
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