Google Releases Android 5.0 Lollipop SDK and Nexus Preview Images 77
An anonymous reader writes: As promised, Google today released the full Android 5.0 Lollipop SDK, along with updated developer images for Nexus 5, Nexus 7 (2013), ADT-1, and the Android emulator. The latest version of Android isn't available just yet, but the company is giving developers a head start (about two weeks), so they can test their apps on the new platform. To get the latest Android 5.0 SDK, fire up Android SDK Manager and head to the Tools section, followed by latest SDK Tools, SDK Platform-tools, and SDK Build-tools. Select everything under the Android 5.0 section, hit "Install packages...", accept the licensing agreement, and finally click Install. Google also rolled out updated resources for their Material Design guidelines.
Just make it fast (Score:5, Insightful)
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How fast can any OS (or person) run with a stick up ones rear the way the Lollipop mascot seems to ?
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It should have been named 'Lamington' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... [wikipedia.org] then Google could have held global 'lamington' bake sales. So instead of a stick in the butt or a very long penis that touches the ground, we could have a chocolate and coconut covered bugdroid.
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They did need a design overhaul. Windows Phone with it's tile layout was way superior.
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I see. It appears that Android is not as easy to customize as I thought, that you could just replace individual components like the UI if you wanted.
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I decided to just shut off all automatic updates from the google play store, and I've been much happier since. I still get notifications when apps need updating, which is fine since I can decide to update when it makes sense for me. I wouldn't mind the auto updates if it didn't make the phone damn near unusable while it w
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Don't check for updates, do not notify for updates
Isn't this the Android default anyway? If you want an update to your OS (not your apps, your OS) you throw away your current phone and buy a new one.
Re:Just make it fast (Score:4, Informative)
Yes it's faster, since they're migrating from the Dalvik JIT runtime to the new ART precompiled app runtime.
But actually, you don't really have to wait for Android 5 to hit your device, it's been buried in the developer options dialog since 4.2.2 http://www.cultofandroid.com/5... [cultofandroid.com]
Hit our Nexus 4 and 5 with this yesterday after reading about it in an arstechnica comment... they're much snappier opening and switching between apps now.
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One of the drivers behind Android L was improving performance on low to mid range Android devices. Google is interested in improving the Android experience for those customers with the 1 cent contract phones, and other flotsam at the bottom of the product menu.
Android L allegedly will perform smoothly, even on devices with 512mb RAM. Which should be a win for those customers with 1gb and 2gb handsets made within the last 2-3 years, as they will be lightning fast.
Android (Score:1, Insightful)
Android 5.0? What about helping your current user base? There's still a lot of users stuck with lower versions of Android.
It's been over 300 days since the release of Kit Kat but only 25% of the devices run it [modmyi.com].
Android (Score:5, Insightful)
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So kinda like iOS 7 or Windows 7 then.
Actually the SDK has been pretty stable for years, and the OS itself has been pretty stable since 4.0 a few years back.
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I bought a Nexus 7 2012 in the assumption Google would update the OS as long as the hardware could handle it.
Luckily CyanogenMod still fully supports it.
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2012 Nexus 7 is getting 5.0:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/10/all-current-nexuses-including-nexus-4-and-2012-nexus-7-will-get-lollipop/
Re:Android (Score:5, Informative)
I bought a Nexus 7 2012 in the assumption Google would update the OS as long as the hardware could handle it. Luckily CyanogenMod still fully supports it.
If you didn't have CM on it, you'd get 5.0 on November 3rd. Android has announced that N7 (2012 and 2013) will be in the first group of Nexus devices to get it.
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CM has ad-hoc wifi and usb mass storage support. Will I get that with this new version of Android, or is Google still ignoring those issues?
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CM has ad-hoc wifi and usb mass storage support. Will I get that with this new version of Android, or is Google still ignoring those issues?
I'm sure no version of Android from Google will include USB mass storage. Doing that requires unmounting /data to remount it as USB mass storage, which creates all sorts of issues. That's why Android switched to using MTP -- back in J, IIRC. It was something of an issue back then because MTP support wasn't very good on the major desktop OSes, but it is now so I'm not sure why anyone would care for the inferior solution. I'm also somewhat surprised that CM still manages to offer it and suspect that continuin
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I don't believe L includes ad-hoc Wifi. I'm curious to hear what you use it for.
I want to experiment with mesh networking, which requires it.
As for mass storage, I meant as a USB host, I should have been more clear. Most devices have support for this, but vanilla android doesn't.
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Vanilla Android most definitely does support USB OTG and I use a Nexus 7 with USB based telemetry for my quad copter. By default out of the box it won't automount USB devices, but there are two options. Either buy an app that sits and waits for a USB Mass Storage device which will automount it, or root the device with the instructions on Google's own website (rooting a Nexus device is perfectly legit) and follow some video guides on setting it up to automount.
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So I can spend money, find a mythical video guide, or I can just run CM. Got it. Sticking with CM. Thanks for validating my decision.
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Right because rooting android and editing a text file or simply spending $4 is so much easier than installing CM.
Something has been validatedvalidated in this thread that's for sure.
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Right because rooting android and editing a text file
which text file? if I use reasonable search terms, even including OTG, I just get a bunch of bullshit about MTP.
or simply spending $4
why should I spend money for functionality I can get for free?
is so much easier than installing CM.
how difficult do you imagine this is?
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Clearly more difficult than a Google search. Seriously the first three articles I click on have links to apps and YouTube videos of how to do it. But whatever, enjoy your cyanogen mod. You need it for adhoc support anyway since android doesn't support it. Just don't sit there and claim USB otg doesn't work because you haven't put the effort in.
By the way the absurdity of complaining about an app that costs half the price of the USB otg cable and 0.75% of the tablet cost is astounding.
Oh and while cm install
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Seriously the first three articles I click on have links to apps and YouTube videos of how to do it
google users do not get the same search results. Do you even google, bro?
By the way the absurdity of complaining about an app that costs half the price of the USB otg cable and 0.75% of the tablet cost is astounding.
Sorry, I'm used to living in a software ecosystem where people help one another for free.
In 2012 it was damn difficult to install Cm.
Maybe for you.
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In 2012 it was damn difficult to install Cm.
Maybe for you.
Yeah rose coloured glasses and all that. I don't think this conversation will get anywhere when you compare installing CM9 to clicking a button on the Play Store.
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I'm sure no version of Android from Google will include USB mass storage. Doing that requires unmounting /data to remount it as USB mass storage, which creates all sorts of issues.
That makes no sense what so ever. Tell me again how USB Mass Storage is magically different from the myriad of devices out there which have SD cards? /etc/usb. But you can't move apps to it. You can however move apps to external SD cards on devices which have support for them.
Also the Nexus 7 2012 has supported USB Mass Storage from the beginning. It mounts in
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That makes no sense what so ever. Tell me again how USB Mass Storage is magically different from the myriad of devices out there which have SD cards?
I was talking about the phone as a target device, and my explanation as to why it changed to use MTP for that purpose is correct. You and the GP were talking about it as a host. I don't know why stock Android doesn't acts as a USM host.
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Oh right, though I still don't understand your comment, especially since Android devices used to be a USB Mass Storage Device.
I thought the move to MTP was due to the way the OS handles such devices exposing more functionality. e.g. Nikon's DSLRs used to be USB Mass Storage and upset a lot of people when they switched to MTP. The reason was detecting the device as a media device exposed the camera to remote control ability and the ability to get a continuous live video feed on the PC. I always figured a mob
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I don't understand your comment as my Android phone from a few years back was recognised as a USB Mass storage device.
Yes, it was. The problem with UMS is that it's a block-level protocol, not a file-level protocol. This means that when storage is mounted via UMS, the host has no way to coordinate with the target device, which is a big problem if the target device is actually operating on the file system. Basically, it's not safe to have two operating system simultaneously using the same block device.
Because of that, when Android acted as a UMS target, it had to unmount the file system, which had all sorts of unpleasant
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Wait, hangon, what has any of this got to do with the data partition? That partition is not user accessible in any normal use case. Android specifically mounts user accessible data in the SDcard partition though the name varies from device, especially on those which have 2 SD cards. The only way to get access to /data is to root the device. Apps don't store data in /data, only the apps and the OS themselves reside there.
The vfat thing is an issue though. I can't recall if I saw that on my older phone or not
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The structure varies from device to device, yes. On the Nexus devices I'm most familiar with, which don't have SD card slots, there is no real sdcard partition. There is an /scdard, but it's a symlink. The advantage to not having a separate partition is not having to create a hard decision about how much to allocate to /data and how much to /scdard. This is one of the benefits of MTP over UMS that I mentioned, and it means that in terms of storage allocation you need only talk about /data, since it's the on
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The 2012 Nexus 7 supports usb mass storage and has supported it even with the original version of Android shipped.
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Yeah, as if Cyanogenmod is ever going to release anything other than an Milestone release.
Srsly. They ditched 10.1 for 11, when 10.1 wasn't even yet stable? It's now most of a year later, and we still don't have a properly-stable, just-works release that doesn't change once a month?
And I say this as someone who actually likes Cyanogenmod, but found another AOSP 4.4.4 build that actually lets me use my multi-core >1GHz pocket computer with more than a thousand megabytes of RAM as it should be.
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Sure thing!
Liquidsmooth. Running on a VZW Motorola Droid Bionic. Beautiful, simple. Fast. Easy.
Re: Android (Score:1)
There are some awesome rom teams blowing CM out of the water right now.
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can you not read? The 2012 nexus is getting Lolipop
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Sounds perfectly cromulent to me...
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It's also Google's problem if they don't want a lot of users stuck on older versions of Android.
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It's not quite the same, since any Dell machine can be upgraded by its owner. The problem with Android devices and upgrades is that the devices tend to be locked down so that only the manufacturer can provide updates. And because of all the modifications they make, it's not that easy to do. Plus, in the US at least, planned obsolescence is the standard. Only now is the competition becoming stiff enough that timely upgrades are a possible selling point.
it seems to me that there are 3 viable models.
1. Sti
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news for nerds? (Score:5, Insightful)
To get the latest Android 5.0 SDK, fire up Android SDK Manager and head to the Tools section, followed by latest SDK Tools, SDK Platform-tools, and SDK Build-tools. Select everything under the Android 5.0 section, hit "Install packages...", accept the licensing agreement, and finally click Install.
or their grandparents???? Thanks, I think If I am a developer, I know how to update my toolset just fine
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I think If I am a developer, I know how to update my toolset just fine
I know developers who could not install the text editor that they edit PHP with. I'm not joking, and I have to deal with them regularly.
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Damnit Jim! I'm a Web Monkey, not a tech support monkey!
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I see what you did there. Give me a break.
Re: android must be doing something right (Score:1)
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Unlike Windows, which regreses with every new release, Android is still improving. We actually look forward to new Android releases, rather than fear them.
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Uh, so developers can check their software works properly before the new release is pushed to end users?
Android v 7 (Score:1)
[joke]Announcing the new version of android for 2018. we have moved the entire userland to the 'popular' SystemD userland with the option of user choosing either plain linux kernel and the newly renovated linuxD kernel.[/joke]
Android TV (Score:1)
From the sound of things, Android 5.0 would probably make a good OS for an HTPC because the user experience puts Windows based HTPCs to shame, and has a lot more application support than e.g. Mythbuntu or anything similar. Have any developers done any work towards running it on an ordinary x86 desktop/nuc PC?
No updates to supported codecs? (Score:2)
Only one truely needed feature (Score:2)
There's only one feature that Android desperately needs, and it's one I doubt that will ever happen.
Google needs to copy iOS's control over app behaviour. The unfortunate fact is, most developers are no where near as good as they think they are (regardless of platform), and there are way too many apps that will obliterate your battery even when they're only running in the background.
This is inexcusable for a mobile operating system that, by definition, runs on devices with limited battery life. It's even