Android L is here, and it's brought a raft of new changes, with Sundar Pichai, head of Android, proclaiming it to be one of the biggest upgrades to Android yet.
It's going to have a radical new design, 5000 new APIs, will be available for developer previews soon, and it's going beyond the mobile form factor. Android L will be contextually aware of its surrounding, plus voice is going to me a major input source.
The experience will also be seamless, so Android L devices communicate properly, although Pichai was at pains to point out the mobile phone will always be the priority.
Design
The big news for Android L is the change to the way it looks - and it's going well beyond the mobile phone to the tablet, TV screen, watch and even the car.
The new Material Design is strange in that it bucks a trend at the moment - yes, it's flat, but it's heavily based on making every animation, every ripple, every shadow look real, which is something that most brands are shying away from.
Google tells us that this feels more intuitive, which means that there will be shadow gradients, 3D tiles that slide over one another and most importantly: access for developers to use this for themselves on their apps.
The idea of obvious: remove the fragmented way Android looks and bring consistency to the app world not matter what device you're on.
Roboto font has been updated too, so everything from watch to TV to mobile looks the same.
Every animation on screen will be allowed to connect to one another - so there's no 'teleportation between apps'. The home, back and multi-tasking window buttons on Android have been refined too, and overall, this is a massive step forward for a cleaner, more intuitive-looking version of Google's mobile platform.
Notifications and lock screen
Notifications on Android L are getting an overhaul, so only the more relevant information about your apps is being presented. The notification panel is being merged with the lockscreen so you can see what's going on as you pick up the phone, and a simple swipe up takes you into the phone.
Imagine that the lockscreen is similar to the notifications panel now, and you're pretty much there.
Android L will also learn from you, working out what you look at and interact with more often to prioritise that notification.
nother big change is that notifications will flow over the screen at the top - get a call when you're playing a game and it will pop up at the top, asking if you want to take it. This will likely be the same with messages etc too, meaning less intrusion at the wrong times.
The lockscreen is getting smarter too - if you've got a specific location set up, or are wearing a Bluetooth device, the phone will recognise you and unlock without a PIN. Move away or take your watch off and you'll need to tap or swipe in a code when you unlock - or you can even use your voice.
Interlocking apps
Google wants your apps to be able to talk to one another - it used the example of searching for a place, only to have it served up in Google Earth, which is where it originally was being looked at.
The idea goes much deeper than that though - Chrome browsing has an API that other apps can take advantage of, so if you click a link to book a table in the browser you'll be taken to something like OpenTable directly, rather than the mobile site.
This feature depends a lot on app developers taking advantage of the new tools, but all the onboard Google apps will be much more dependent on one another.
Android L battery life
Batteries on phones running Android L are going to become more efficient with Project Volta, Google's new way of showing why and how a phone's power pack is juicing down.
It opens up the battery use to developers so they can see what's ruining the experience, which should in turn help plug the gaps in power leakage. Nothing specific to talk about yet but will help make things look more efficient.
Battery Saver mode is integrated by default too, which can lengthen your use during the day by up to 90 mins. Not extreme power saving like on Samsung or HTC phones, but still useful to have baked in, even if all and sundry already have a likely more efficient version on board.
Even without Battery Saver mode Android L could do wonders for battery life. ArsTechnica put the new OS version to the test and found that a Nexus 5 running Android L had around 36% more battery life than one on Android 4.4 KitKat.
Android 5.0 interface
While little is known about the potential interface changes for the next iteration of Google's mobile platform, be it Android 5.0 or Android 4.5, a screenshot has appeared online claiming to reveal the upcoming version.
There's a clear visual overhaul present in the screenshot, and according to the leak the new design is being referred to as "Moonshine" internally at Google.
We've also caught a glimpse of how the dialer might look in Android 4.5 / Android 5, courtesy of an image leaked by Google itself. It's not in for a radical redesign but if the image is to be believed then it will be going blue, rather than sticking with the current light gray colour.
Android 5.0 release date
Given Android 4.4 KitKat appeared on 31 October, we're looking forward to finally seeing a big step forward for Android. The good news is we're going to get our first taste at Google IO, the search firm's annual two-day developer conference in San Francisco.
That's a year on from when we had originally expected to see Android 5.0, which was at Google IO 2013, but Google has been keeping things within the '4.x' family for a while now.
Sundar Pichai, Google's new head of Android told Wired that 2013's IO was "not a time when we have much in the way of launches of new products or a new operating system"," which makes us wonder when the new software will be coming.
Our take: Android updates are still appeating too slowly for our liking, as while each 0.1-numbered upgrade is good, it's not enough to make us want the native experience.
We're expecting Google to make Android 5 rather special indeed, which means it can only wait a maximum of 6-7 months after KitKat was announced to show it off - so it's a relief to hear it's appearing, in some form at least, at the conference.
More recent reports of Android 4.5 being next in line may mean the update is more iterative than sprawling overhaul, so we're not getting too carried away just yet.
In any case Google I/O is set for June 25-26, so with any luck we should know lots, lots more about what Android Lollipop will be bringing to the table soon.
Source: TechRadar, Google/Android
