Tag: Android Nougat

For those of us that love Android, yesterday a pretty rock solid day.  Android Nougat was released and devices that were a part of the beta program have already started seeing the final NRD90M build hit their devices (you can read my review to get all the details on Nougat).  One tidbit of news in all of the hubbub of the release was the announcement of regular maintenance releases for Nougat.  It was easy to miss as, as far as I am aware, it was only posted in the Android Developer Blog announcing the release.  That blog, unless you are developer, isn’t on everyone’s reading list understandably.  In that post from Dave Burke, he pointed out a small but important piece of information about Nougat.

We’re moving Nougat into a new regular maintenance schedule over the coming quarters. In fact, we’ve already started work on the first Nougat maintenance release, that will bring continued refinements and polish, and we’re planning to bring that to you this fall as a developer preview. Stay tuned!

This new maintenance schedule is independent of the monthly security updates.  This new maintenance schedule is all about bringing features, refinements and fixes to the platform.  It is also, in my opinion, a shot across the bow of manufactures who drag their feet in getting the .0 releases out.  Android is going to march forward and Google, more or less, is telling OEMs to get with the program.

Update – OTA for the Nexus 5X, Nexus 9 and Pixel C are now rolling out to devices.

Wow!  That was fast!  It dropped on the world an hour ago and now the Android Nougat OTA updates are already starting to roll out.  Multiple people, including me, have been notified that the update is available on their devices.  In my case, I’ve received the update notification on my Nexus 6 and Nexus 6P but I have not received it yet on my Nexus 9 tablet.  I suspect that Google is slow rolling things at the minute.

As I put in my review of Nougat, this is an evolution of Android and not necessarily a revolutionary update.  However, there are a lot of nice improvements to the Notification Shade, power management, emergency information and a lot more.  It is a good, solid update for sure.

A great deal on the Nexus 5X is running today over on eBay.  While supplies last you can pick up the Nexus 5X in Quartz (white) for just $199.  That’s a savings of $150 off the regular price that you get from Google direct.  The phone is brand new, unlocked and is the 16GB model from a storage perspective.  While the price itself is outstanding, keep in mind that the 5X will be getting the Android Nougat update and will be one of the first ones to get it.  That release is expected later today so by the time you get your phone shipped to you, the update should be out and ready for you to load up on your 5X.

If you are considering a Huawei Honor device as your next Android phone, there is some good news for you today.  Taylor Wimberly, the eCommerce Customer Acquisition Manager for the company here in the US, posted on his Google+ account some exciting news around support for Honor devices.  In essence, if you buy one, you are going to be supported with software updates – minor and major – for up to 24 months.

From this year we are making a commitment to provide customers with access to new features (at least once every three months during the first 12 months) for up to 24 months following each product launch.

This is great news as one of the biggest problems in Androidville is device updates from manufactures.  Huawei is giving it a good effort and that should make you more confident in buying their devices.

The utilitarian app Google Calculator has been updated for Android and while it is certainly a small update, it does have one nice new creature comfort feature and an underlying more important one.  First, the update is build is version 7.0.1 for those keeping score at home and it is rolling out in the Google Play Store now.  You should see the OTA in a day or two.  As for the creature comfort feature, the app now groups large numbers.  In other words, here in the US, you will see a comma between each group of numbers such as 123,456,789.  Previously you would just see 123456789.  Again, not a big deal but it does make it easier if you are using the app for computing large numbers.

In the latest platform version update from the Android team, the slow adoption of Android Marshmallow continues in the market.  The latest version of Android is now running on 15.2% of all devices that hit the Play Store during a 7 day period that ended August 1st.  That is up from 13.3% in the report last month.  While the growth is certainly not setting the world alight, it is a positive sign that more devices are either coming with the latest version of Android installed or are getting updated.  But, frankly, this also is a bit disheartening when you consider that in all likelihood, we will see Android Nougat released this month.