Android 5.0 Lollipop, Nexus 6 & Nexus 9 Announced

Written by Michael Larabel in Google on 15 October 2014 at 12:22 PM EDT. 42 Comments
GOOGLE
Google has out a slew of announcements today concerning Android and its Nexus product line.

First up, Google has confirmed what we've known as "Android L" to be Android 5.0/Lollipop. Android Lollipop is the biggest Android UI redesign inyears and pursues a "material design" approach. Android Lollipop also uses the new ART run-time to replace Dalvik, a new battery management system, thousands of new APIs, and a new notification system, among other benefits. Android Lollipop powers the new Nexus 6 and Nexus 9 devices while it will begin rolling out to existing Android devices over the weeks ahead.

The Nexus 9 that was finally announced today is an HTC-manufactured device and meets the other speculations set by earlier rumors. The Nexus 9 has a 2048 x 1440 8.9-inch display, 2GB of RAM, 16/32GB storage options, and perhaps most exciting for us is that it features NVIDIA's Tegra K1 SoC. The Tegra K1 SoC is my most favorite ARM System-on-a-Chip at the moment with offering stellar CPU performance and excellent graphics via its Kepler derived GPU core. The Nexus 9 will be available via retail channels in early November.

The Nexus 6 smart-phone is made by Motorola and has a 5.9-inch 2560x1440 display and looks like a larger version of the Moto X. This new high-end Nexus smart-phone uses a 64-bit Snapdragon 805 processor by Qualcomm. The Nexus 6 should also be available in November while pre-orders on these new devices will start later this month.

Lastly, Google also announced the Nexus Player as a set-top streaming box running Android TV. The Google Nexus Player is made by ASUS.


Over at the Google blog is information on all of Google's Android announcements for the day.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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