Published in Mobiles

Android 5.0 still not ready

by on23 October 2014



Will be by November 3rd

It turns out that Android L, Android Lollipop or Android 5.0 however you want to call it, is still not ready for prime time.

There is a good chance that a new update will be ready by the time Google starts fulfilling its pre-orders and when people start getting their Nexus 9 tablets at their doorsteps. The update will bring the devices to their final state.

According to industry sources, Google is putting the finishing touches on Android 5.0 and it is most likely that there will be an update waiting as soon as the new Nexus devices start shipping. There is also a chance that Google will be able to flash some of the devices before they ship, but bear in mind that shipping is just 10 days away and that it takes a long time to ship them from China to Europe or USA, the launch markets for these devices.

Nexus 9 should look very high end, it doesn’t have a microSD slot and competes with the Apple iPad Air 2 and iPad Mini 3, since it is priced between the two. It will be interesting to see how market reacts to the fact that Google doubled the price of its tablet in two years, starting at €199 in 2012, going to €219 for the 2013 Full HD device and finally getting to €399 and a 9-inch device. Just have in mind that for the price of Nexus 9 you can buy two Nexus 7 2013 devices or a new iPad mini 3 and we don’t expect that Android 5.0 and Nvidia's 64-bit Denver core will make a huge difference.

It looks like Google is experiencing some problems with its OS update, just like Apple which had to delay some features from the iOS 8.0 and release them a few weeks later in iOS 8.1 when they worked out the kinks. The jump from Android 4.4.4, which is available on a handful of devices ,to Android 5.0 sounds like a big leap, but we don’t expect to be blown away. Android 5.0 material design looks prettier, it runs native 64-bit applications and will have a few nice new or improved notification features. Since Google Chrome I am currently using on a 64-bit version of Windows 7 is still 32-bit, almost 10 years after the introduction of 64-bit Windows XP, the transition to 64-bit Android apps will obviously take a lot of time.

The sad part is that even after we get 64-bit applications on Android, we won't see a huge boost in terms of sheer performance.

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