Android 5.0 Lollipop – A sweeter mobile operating system?

 

Android 5.0 Lollipop

ANDROID 5.0 is the biggest update to the mobile operating system since 2011, when Android 4.0 unified the smartphone and tablet versions. This new version is designed not only with those devices in mind but also smart watches, smart TVs and even smarter cars. That’s leaping a little too far ahead, though, as so far we’ve only tried Android 5.0 on the HTC-manufactured Nexus 9 tablet and the LG-made Nexus 5 smartphone. Not all third-party apps work perfectly yet, but Google has done sterling work on the latest version of the OS, making numerous improvements across the board.

FIRST LICK

The first new feature doesn’t take long to surface, as Android 5.0 asks if you want to restore the state of another Android device on this one. This means it can install all your apps, add your shortcuts and widgets and place them exactly where you like them on the homescreen.

The OS presents a checklist of all your apps. We cut down the 101 apps installed on our Nexus 5 to a neater and more tablet-appropriate list of 13 to be installed on the Nexus 9. Grey versions of the icons appear on the homescreen in a similar position to those on our phone, and fill with colour as they install. If you reset a device, you can also use the same feature to restore it to its last state.

Other than that, setup is as easy as ever. Just enter your Gmail address and password and you’re ready to go. Android even remembers Wi-Fi passwords from device to device, so any network details on your previous phone or tablet are passed over to the new device.

For security, Android 5.0 lets you lock and unlock your device using another device. Its support for Bluetooth and NFC devices means your Android device will unlock instantly in the presence of your chosen item. You can also use a PIN or screen lock pattern in case you lose or forget your chosen unlock device.

 MATERIAL GIRL

Major trends in graphic design don’t come along every day, so it’s no surprise to see that Google has followed Apple in making an operating system that looks flatter. Icons have been simplified rather than looking like little 3D objects. Colour is also in vogue, with colourful icons, a greater variety of colours and more unusual combinations.

The operating system still does 3D rendering, but each object – which Google calls a piece of ‘Material’ – is flat like a piece of paper. These can move up and down off the homescreen, cast shadows and be dragged over other objects, but they don’t have any depth themselves.

Google has been working on its new style for some time, so icons for Chrome, YouTube, Google+ and others look no different in version 5, but they match the new icons for things such as Calculator, Calendar, Clock and Downloads, as you can see below.

Those colours stand out against a new white background. White was once a bad idea for mobile operating systems, as all that brightness eats battery life, but such things are less critical than they were, and white looks a lot more approachable than black. The main example is the app tray, which now presents all your apps in a white window, rather than hovering over a soft-focus version of your current wallpaper.

This new white design hasn’t just appeared from nowhere – it has been in the pipeline for some time in the form of Google Now. More and more of Google’s OS is beginning to look and act like the little cards of useful information that make up the Google Now service. Notifications appear on a white background, for example, and the recent apps buttons brings up a Rolodex of cards, one for every app.

THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME

The Android homescreen hasn’t changed much in practical terms, but then it was always flexible compared with that of its main rival. You can still put app shortcuts wherever you want, drag them into folders and mix and match them with widgets from a huge number of apps, many of which you can resize to suit your needs.

Our Nexus 9 has a 6x5 grid on each homescreen to position these on, with six extra spots in a dock for apps you use most often. New homescreens are created to the right when required, and Google Now sits to the left. Google Now has a new two-column layout but otherwise is the same as ever, with the usual topical and seasonal header graphics.

 MENU BAR AND NOTIFICATIONS

The menu bar has the usual split of notification icons on the left and handy indicators, such as network status and battery life, on the right.

Swipe down on the screen, though, and you’ll see an all-new combined settings and notifications menu, which consists of white cards over a darkened homescreen.

You can tap each card to open it in the appropriate app, and drag down to see further details, if they exist. Some cards also have instant actions you can take, such as replying to emails or snoozing an event reminder. This works much the same as it did before, apart from its appearance and some slick animation.

Swipe down again – or swipe with two fingers – and you’ll see a handy panel with shortcuts for various settings. There’s a brightness control, although strangely the auto brightness toggle is stuck in the main settings menu, and with that turned on, the slider only seems to work intermittently. We played with it at length and couldn’t see any logic to it. We’d rather have an auto brightness control next to the slider that we could use to tweak the level selected by the sensor.

Also in the settings shortcut panel is a Wi-Fi strength indicator, which also shows the name of the current connection. You can tap to switch connections quickly. There’s a Bluetooth control, as well as buttons for Aeroplane mode and auto-rotate, a built-in flashlight, a button for turning location sharing on or off and a cast screen button that lets you connect to a Chromecast easily. You can see how much charge your battery has left and also an estimate of how long a full charge will take.

Tapping the volume control brings up a menu that lets you decide who you receive

notifications from. You can quickly set this to ‘All’ for no filtering, or limit incoming calls and email alerts to a small set of ‘Priority’ contacts – basically those starred in your contacts list. You can even turn off notifications altogether or set downtime so that, for example, you set up a rule that allows only priority notifications to come through in the evenings. It’s a little confusing at first and requires careful management of your contacts list to work well, but it’s still a welcome extra.

 BENEATH THE WRAPPER

Android hasn’t changed radically on the surface with 5.0, but it’s a very different beast under the hood. The headline feature is its support for the new 64-bit mobile chipsets, such as the Nvidia K1 chipset used in the Nexus 9 or the forthcoming 64-bit Snapdragon chipsets – most notably the 808 and 810.

Switching to 64-bit should bring significant performance gains when dealing with complex tasks, where the processor’s larger registers can handle bigger numbers. It will also raise the memory limit above the current 4GB ceiling, although that’s not really an issue for today’s mobile devices.

The operating system now runs and compiles code in a different way too, using the new Android Runtime (ART). We should see performance and battery life benefits from the new system, which compiles code to be executed on installation, not when the application launches.

Google has also taken steps to improve battery life by making numerous tweaks under the name Project Volta. This aims to reduce unnecessary battery use during basic tasks such as waking from standby and checking for emails and other updates. The operating system is more efficient in how it deals with such housekeeping tasks, and developers have been given better tools to manage their battery usage. Tests on the developer version of Android 5.0 have shown around 35 per cent improvement, and we were impressed by the 16 hours of video playback we got from our review sample of the Nexus 9.             

There’s also a battery saver mode that you can start manually or set to kick in at a certain battery level, say five per cent. This throttles performance (the SunSpider benchmark score more than doubled to a sluggish 2,156ms) and limits radio usage, so apps don’t update unless you open them. It looks handy, stretching out your last hour of battery life without the usual dance of disabling Wi-Fi and mobile internet. You know when it’s running, as the menu bars turn orange to warn you.

TEETHING ISSUES

Android 5.0 didn’t give us much trouble, but we had problems with some of our favourite apps such as iPlayer, which wouldn’t download programmes or stream them at anything more than passable quality. We couldn’t load the Amazon Instant Video player, either, although that’s a tortuous process when attempted through the main Amazon app anyway.

These issues can’t be laid at Google’s door, but it’s worth remembering that it’s early days for the OS and some app providers simply aren’t up to speed yet. If having all your apps working is more important to you than the new features, we’d recommend waiting a couple of months before upgrading.

WORTH A POP?

Android 5.0 Lollipop looks great, with a new design that’s a breath of fresh air. All the built-in apps we use regularly have had major facelifts and most have been improved in the way they work too, becoming easier to understand and with better tablet-landscape layouts.

Beneath the hood the OS is certainly much better too. Battery life looks to be excellent, although we’ll need to do before-and-after testing on a wide range of devices before we can confirm this. Support for 64-bit was a must, of course, but it’s still welcome.

It’s early days, so inevitably there are problems with some apps, but we’re happy to say that for most Android users an update to 5.0 is something to look forward to. It’s the best version yet and although the changes are incremental, it’s still an important step forward.