Time for happy news! Google has just released Android 5.0 Lollipop, and to accompany the release of their latest treat, they’re also unveiling not one, but three new Nexus devices.
Let’s start with Android Lollipop. Since its features have been unveiled months ago, there’s little news to tell you that you don’t already know. The biggest visible change is Material Design, the brand new design and behaviour language that spans all of Android’s screens – from watch to car. Notifications have been significantly overhauled, and Lollipop will give you more control over what you see and when. There’s also a lot of work done on battery usage, and Google promises you should get 90 minutes more battery life with the battery saver feature.
As fa as security goes, and as we touched upon recently, all new devices will come with encryption turned on by default, making it harder for third parties to see what’s on your device if it get stolen or impounded. Lollipop will also be the first Android release to swap out Dalvik in favour of ART, and it brings support for 64bit.
Google will release a new Developer Preview for Android Lollipop this Friday, which, looking at its label, still isn’t complete. Of course, this build is for Nexus devices only.
The Nexus devices, too, have been leaked extensively. There’s the Motorola-made Nexus 6, with its huge 6″ 2560×1440 display, Snapdragon 805 processor, and a 13 MP camera with OIS. It basically looks like a larger Moto X – not exactly my thing (way too large), and the price is decidedly non-Nexus too: $649. It’ll be available on contract, too. Luckily, the Nexus 5 remains available as well. Pre-orders will open late October.
The second new Nexus is the Nexus 9, built by HTC. As the name suggests, it’s got a 9″ 2048×1536 with a 4:3 aspect ratio. The processor is interesting: NVIDIA Tegra K1 64-bit dual-core processor at 2.3 GHz, making this the first 64bit Nexus device. It’s a lot cheaper than the Nexus 6 at a mere $399, and it will also be available for pre-order 17 October (in stores on 3 November).
Lastly, there’s the odd one out: the Nexus Player. It’s a box (well, circle) for your TV, much like the Apple TV. It’s actually got an Intel Atom processor inside, making it the first x86 Nexus device. It’s got all the usual TV stuff, and Google is selling a dedicated gaming controller separately. It’ll also be available for pre-order on 17 October, for $99.
I can’t wait to update my Nexus 5 to Lollipop, but I’m a little unsure about the Nexus 6. It’s huge and expensive (in Nexus terms), and I just don’t like the Motorola design (but that’s moot).
4:3 aspect ratio makes me so happy…
i would love to see x86 based tablet instead of Tv.
Dell makes x86 based tablets with what I believe is stock Android at a very nice price.
Is there even a 64 bit processor for android mobile devices to take advantage of that yet?
It’s good to know that support is there but I haven’t seen anything referenced currently available or in the pipeline. Is there anything that I’m not aware of?
Edited 2014-10-15 18:03 UTC
Read the article. The Nexus 9 is 64bit.
nice. I didn’t see that. I’m excited to see an Ars benchmark review and comparison to other mobile 64 bit processors. Surely Ars will author it.
If Apple had done this… you would have referenced how Apple was just catching up and that it was a me-too device.
That would be hard since this is not the first Apple TV-like device from Google.
Better troll next time.
The first offering was not an Apple-TV-like device. It had a full keyboard for God sakes.
No, one of the previous Google Tvs had a keyboard (https://support.logitech.com/en_us/product/7569) .
Others did not.
http://www.google.com/tv/get.html
I said “The first offering”
Well, No again. There were three orignal devices released at the same time. Not all of them had a keyboard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_TV#First_Generation
Even if they did all have keyboards, There was a second generation that was released before this nexus tv device that did not have them.
What thom said is correct:
I don’t think it’s catching up since I don’t think this market is very mature yet. Everyone’s still floundering trying to find something that really works.
That’s not to say the current offerings are bad, necessarily, just that they aren’t really compelling either. Even the company’s making them seem to be somewhat unsure what there for. That’s why we often get a gamepad with little effort to support gamepad-oriented games. The thinking mainly seems to be “This is a tech product category, and we are a tech company, so we should compete here”.
Amazon and Sony seem to have a fuller vision than most, though I’m rather skeptical about the Vita interface being thrown on a TV largely unchanged from what I can tell (though I haven’t actually tried the Playstation TV).
Which is saying something about how much their competitors must really suck if those 2 are the best of the crop.
Apparently, Verizon is going to carry the Nexus 6…that may have to be my next upgrade (I am one of those people who prefer the large display).
Perhaps now I won’t have to wait 6 months for a system update, since the Nexus line usually gets them first for obvious reasons.
They did not offer the Nexus from Verizon when I got my last phone.
Went to the Nexus Player web site and read:
“Your favorite apps on Nexus Player. Get your apps on Google Play…”
Question: can a user install an internet browser (FireFox, Chrome etc.) or is the app store restricted to the Nexus Player platform?
What I really dislike with all these kinds of offerings (Roku, AppleTV etc.) is that they do not offer a “normal” internet browser for their platform.
There was a “SafariHD” app (3rd party) for the first Apple TV devices, but for whatever reason it’s not available anymore.
I don’t know, but for us Amazon Prime subscribers, not having Amazon Video on that thing is a huge, huge huge, HUGE oversight. Google should be at Amazon’s front door with their pocket book open, asking ‘How much’? You might as well just ship it without Netflix.
As for Nexus 6 and Nexus 9, I would’ve bought both of them had they been one inch smaller.
Edited 2014-10-15 20:36 UTC
I understand that some people, somewhere, must get value out of Amazon Video.
But I’m a Prime subscriber and I haven’t used Amazon Video in months because there’s never anything I want to watch on it.
I haven’t even bothered to log into it on my TV.
Another reason I use it is because I can’t get Google Play videos to sync progress between devices. Instead of auto resuming, they just start from the beginning. That’s annoying.
Actually, rather than build any of these subscription services into the device, it should just be part of Google Play. Then any of these providers could just write a new interface atop their already existing applications and you could literally have any subscription service that wants to be part of this new device. Have a simple screen with some defaults when you first set it up so people don’t have to go searching right away (perhaps intelligent defaults based on your selected region) but I’d hate to see it go the Apple TV route. Google’ve got one hell of an opportunity and they shouldn’t waste it.
That’s the problem. Amazon doesn’t want Google’s money. They want their customers. Prime Video is not available on any Android OS’s because Amazon has a competing OS in Fire OS. It would be nothing for Amazon to “port” it to Android since Fire OS is just a modified version of Android, but that would make fewer reasons for people to want to stick with Kindles and Fire TV.
Edited 2014-10-16 20:00 UTC
Actually, it is, as of about a month ago. But you have to jump through hoops to install it, esp if you’re on a tablet. Meanwhile, of course it all just works on an iPad, as it always does.
With that kind of price, I bet people (or at least geeks and tech reviewers) won’t overlook any flaws on the Nexus 6 as easily as they did with the Nexus 5.
The real test for Android now will be;
1. How quickly third party apps adopt this new Material Design language.
2. How quickly manufacturers update their KitKat handsets to Lolipop.
Can someone please explain why the 6″ phone gets a 16:9 aspect ratio and yet the 9″ tablet gets the awful 4:3 aspect ratio? A completely inconsistent decision, IMHO.
On my tablets, I watch a lot of videos and 4:3 is a *disaster* because pretty well all video content is widescreen nowadays (16:9 or even narrower vertically).
It’s one of the things Apple has got consistently wrong for fullscreen video playing – at one point they even had the original iPad Mini unable to play widescreen 720p movies without scaling down and a dropping a load of pixels whilst adding black bars at the top and bottom…laughable!
I guess that’s the end of my tablet purchases for this year then – will have to wait and see if the 2015 Nexus tablet reverts to 16:9 again. In the meantime, I presume we’ll see CyanogenMod 12 with its Android Lollipop goodness – that’s the only interesting thing left in 2014, IMHO.
Edited 2014-10-15 20:37 UTC
Are you asking that of only Google or also of Apple? Your question can easily apply to Apple, too;
“Can someone please explain why the 6″ iPhone gets a 16:9 aspect ratio and yet the 9″ iPad gets the awful 4:3 aspect ratio? A completely inconsistent decision, IMHO.“
4:3 is way better for productivity. I always felt even the large Nexus 10 feels incredibly cramped for doing anything productive. When I watch movies its on the 10′ projector screen, not some crappy tablet anyway
I agree about the productivity bit, but there are instances when you want to watch something and you don’t have a TV or projector nearby (on a plane/train, in a hotel room if the TV doesn’t have HDMI, if you are too lazy to get up and go to the TV
etc).
I guess it depends on what you want to do with the tablet. For me it’s just entertainment, I have my desktop and laptop for productivity.
awful 4:3 aspect ratio?
4:3 is perfect. I use tablet several hours/day for internet/PDF doc browsing/games. And I don’t care about black bars if ocasionally I play some video. Your 16:9 tablet doesn’t have these pixels at all.
I really like how Android is shaping up. The new “Material” interface is really slick and very polished! I also like the smaller memory footprint and increased battery life. Now if only Google could figure out how to force phone manufacturers to use vanilla Android and gain updates directly from Google, then it would solve a lot of fragmentation problems.
The Google TV kit looks interesting. I currently use an Android HDMI dongle with my TV. With a small bluetooth keyboard and mouse it’s child’s play to stream movies and music from my server; browse the web and even work with Google Docs to get work done in the comfort of my living room.
Nexus 5 has been out of stock for weeks on Google Play. So much for it being still available.
Nexus 6 is ridiculous both in price and size. That kills the whole point of the Nexus line of phones as far as I’m concerned. I guess other manufacturers got mad at Google for undercutting them
[q]Nexus 6 is ridiculous both in price and size./q]
The same size as an iPhone 6 Plus but much cheaper.
Nexus was previously about decent hardware for cheap. Thats what made it unique. The iPhone has never been about cheap so the 6+ is par for the course.
The Nexus brand has always been about selling very small numbers (375,000 Nexus 4) of flagship level hardware at (near) cost price.
The Nexus 4 and 5 were class leaders when announced. There has never been a cheap or mid-range Nexus phone released.
The Nexus 6 is meant to be another limited edition flagship. It has class leading hardware and is cheaper than equivalent phones.
If you want cheap decent but hardware you buy Motorola, Huawei, Alacatel or ZTE.
Exactly. Too damned big. Ridiculous.
Indeed, I was hoping to replace my Nexus S by the next Nexus generation but the price and size pretty much kill it for me. When I need more screen size, I’ll just use my tablet (Nexus 7) or laptop.
I’m not sure where to look for a proper replacement that is as updateable/moddable as the Nexus. My S is getting a bit slow and unresponsive unfortunately.
Edited 2014-10-16 09:36 UTC
The Nexus 5 is still going to be sold. I love mine. And after this you probably can get very cheap used ones. Used Nexus 4 devices are super cheap.
Aside from the SDK, I didn’t see anything about a new nexus image/dev release. Does anyone have a source on it?
Source code will probably be released at the same time/shortly after the SDK release, or, as they have done before, only the GPL parts at the same time as the SDK, and the rest of the source when the first device running it ships….
Do we actually need 2560×1440 smartphone displays?
When will this display size race stop – when the smartphones don’t fit neither in your pocket nor in your hand?
I’d personally say no, we do not need such high resolutions. I feel 1080p is hitting the sweet spot on a mobile phone, it provides clear font-rendering and graphics, and I just can’t fathom how increasing the resolution any further would be of benefit to me.
Then again, I don’t like this insane race to paper-thin devices, either; I totally wouldn’t mind having even a 3-times thicker devices if I could just get more battery-life out of it and perhaps a slide-out, physical keyboard. I do not like the compromise of less powerful specs and less battery at the price of thinness.
Agreed. Scale back the display to 1080p, abandon the spec war in places where it makes no difference, and give me a multi-day battery life. Apple had a golden opportunity with their more efficient hardware/software combo and they blew it. An extra millimetre would add huge battery capacity given the size of the phones these days.
This display war needs to go on Laptops, where everyone is stuck with 1366*768 shitty display.
when they have nothing to innovate they push more pixels.
100% agreement from me.
Higher resolution displays have been available for a year and a bit now (Apple first, and now everyone else). I’ve got 2560×1440 on my 13″ laptop, and that’s actually a bit too low res for the size/distance. Type still get visibly jagged edges, even with good anti-aliasing. There are some available with 3200×1800, which should be just about sufficient for 13″.
Actually, the problem is that mid-range laptops are going backwards. My everyday laptop is from late 2006 / early 2007, and it has a 12.1 inch 1400*1050 display. Today, laptops in that price range are lighter, thinner, etc. etc. but invariably have 1366*768 displays. The horizontal resolution has also gone down, so it isn’t just about the proliferation of widescreen displays. Display resolution really is degrading.
completely agree, i don’t understand how making a phone so thin the camera protrudes is a useful design feature?
I like you all would have much preferred a phone that could have lasted 3 days or even better a week, sacrificing thinness and a little weight to get it. It would have been a big show stopper if apple had pulled that out of the bag!
I’ve thought about combining a low powered small screen QWERTY feature phone on one side with a touchscreen smartphone on the other side.
Pretty nice set of features. Though I find pure android somewhat lacking and elementary. Will see how Samsung will adapt their TouchWiz to new Android design.
No expandable storage. Fine for phones in my case but I need that feature on my tablet as I carry lots of files with me. Hopefully we get some Lollypop devices on the way from someone else who won’t omit this essential feature. Too bad, because the Nexus 9 looks promising in every other aspect.
This is not the Nexus 6 I was waiting for…
(especially the entertainment model!
)
Nexus devices aren’t really cheap by definition. On phones, only Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 by LG were cheap, not the previous ones. My Galaxy Nexus cost my company 450 euros, compared to my 300 euro Nexus 4, for example.
I’ve been running the developer preview image all weekend, the new material design looks great, no apparent bug.
There are a couple of things that break compatibility. Due to the switch to ART, apps using JNI will crash if they use CallObjectMethod on a java class method returning void (CallVoidMethod is required). Also, explicit intents are now required, so even an older google billing lib will crash and exit the app; an update to the latest is required. Both changes mean updating all your apps in the play store.