Android Marshmallow
At their Nexus event this morning, Google spoke a lot about the coming update. The features have been talked about by Scott earlier this morning, but include great animations, improved lockscreen and app drawer which surfaces your most recent apps, the awesome power-saving Doze feature and more – all of which you can check out on the Android Marshmallow micro-site.

So, when can you play with Marshmallow? Well, if you want to purchase a Nexus 5X or 6P, it looks like maybe mid-October you’ll be able to purchase one from the Google Store starting at $659 for the Nexus 5X or $899 for the Huawei 6P. If you have a Nexus phone or tablet already, you might be getting a surprise next week, with Dave Burke Senior Engineering Director, Android announcing that the rollout will begin next week to the Nexus 5, Nexus 6, Nexus 7 (2013), Nexus 9, and Nexus Player as Over-The-Air update. You can watch Dave announce it right here:

For owners of the Nexus 4, Nexus 7 (2012), Nexus 10, unfortunately the devices (though technically still capable), won’t receive the update. Keep an eye out for the OTA file to arrive in the coming week.

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BrainBeat

Oh well I guess my mum will have to live with extremely laggy lollypop on her nexus 7 2012. I am not sure MM would have fixed this and likely would have made things worse but it is a shame support has come to an end for it. That is assuming the list above is the final list and not just those they do next week with these other older devices maybe getting it in future?

I must say mobile OS versions do seem to go old a lot quicker than on desktops (see windows XP for example)

Level380

So N4 love? Gee these nexus devices drop off the support list pretty quick.

People complain about OEM support, google isn’t much better. Guess this will be the last update for the N5 too.

zeitgeb3r

N4 is 3yrs old. Google only guarantees updates up to 24 months.

Level380

Correct, google said updates for at least 24 months. There is not reason they can’t drop the update to this phone other than pure laziness.

As above, people say OEMs are bad, google isn’t any better!

Piers Porter

In retrospect, Google did everyone with a Nexus 7 (2012) a massive disservice by upgrading them to Lollipop. I have no problem with them leaving older Nexus devices un-updated and still functional. It’s so much better than having the latest OS destroying any pleasure you get from your device. Perhaps making the upgrade optional (with strongly worded warnings) would be the answer here.

Level380

The N4 was/is NEVER anywhere near as bad as the N7 2012 model. That thing should have been recalled as it was a dog even pre lollipop with its dodgy storage memory (slowness).

As someone who used 5.1 on the n5 and both preview releases, there isn’t any major huge jump in looks/demand on the hardware. Anything that could run 5.x should be able to run 6.x

Piers Porter

I agree that on my Nexus 5, Lollipop was not (noticeably) any slower than KitKat. But I disagree that the Nexus 7 was always a dog. I got one at release and 4.1 Jellybean was slick and responsive. IIRC it was released as part of project “Butter”, and largely lived up to the name. Compared to my 2 other Android tablets of the time, it screamed. If there were serious issues with memory i/o on the Nexus 7, it only became apparent on the newer OS releases. I think you’ll struggle to find anyone who would find Lollipop on a… Read more ยป

BrainBeat

Mum still uses her N7 2012 and it still works ok for her for video so she does not complain much. When I use it it is a dog to use now when more than a few apps are open. It was fine pre 4.4 but after that the lag has gotten really bad. I personally think it must be ram related either than or there is some really bad code wasting a lot of cpu cycles.

Level380

Well I wasn’t talking kitkat -> Lollipop. I’m talking Lollipop -> Android M. On the N5 there is no noticeable difference in speed etc. Now Lollipop also works fine on the N4, so then android 6.0 should work fine too.

chris

Finally!!! on my N6 I have to reboot almost daily to get the phone to work properly. For me Lollipop has been a pile of steaming $$%#$%^