Android Lollipop 5.0: Be Together. Not The Same.

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Lollipop lollipop oh lolli-lolli pop!

Finally, Android Lollipop 5.0 is here. Lollipop, the newest Android software release designed to meet the diverse needs of the billion-plus people who already use Android today, will be available on Nexus 4, 5, 6, 7 9, 10 & Google Play edition devices. As a community of Android enthusiasts, we are all part of this definitive evolution of one of the best hand held OS in the world.

Lollipop is the largest, most ambitious release on Android with over 5,000 new APIs for developers. It is designed to be flexible, to work on all your devices, and to be customized for you the way you see fit. And just like Android has always been, it’s designed to be shared.

The Googleplex got a little bit sweeter with the unveiling of a new Android statue and the "Be together.  Not the same" tagline sounds like a good, make that "sweet", sentiment too. Everyone can get along while still being unique. Life needs to be as sweet as candy.

"I'm excited about the new audio API's and what this means for music creation and audio recording on Android. This is a major step. It's been bad for years and iOS has had this over us since the beginning." - Francis Bawasanta

"One of the new products announced was the $99USD Nexus Player ... a gaming and media console that will be going head-to-head with the likes of Roku, the aging AppleTV and various Android set-top boxes (STBs) such as the Minix Neo X8-H.

There is a lot to like about the Nexus Player ... the unit comes with the new AndroidTV announced at this past summer's GoogleIO, and the hardware that is included is pretty nice too.  The only thing that I am concerned about are the things that are not present in the design.

1) No wired network connection ... you will need to rely on WiFi.  The WiFi adapter in the unit is very good, but there will be some instances where WiFi just isn't going to cut it.

2) No dedicated audio output port.  All audio is transferred via the HDMI connector.  Again, in many situations, this will be ok, but I know that there are some home theatres that need to get the audio out of a separate port than the video signals.

3) No full sized USB Port(s).  Most likely this can be, at least partially, worked around via the single microUSB OTG connector.  On my current system, I am using two USB connectors: One for an external hard drive and one for a dongle for the RF Airmouse/Remote.

4) No Flash Memory Expansion.  As mentioned above,m this unit will be marketed with an emphasis on gaming.  With only 8GB of internal memory (~2GB of which being used by the OS etc), there won't be a lot of room for many games to be installed.

5) No IR receiver.  Sorry to all of the Harmony Remote fans out there.

For $99USD, it is still an attractive package that we will be ordering when it comes up for sale tomorrow at the play store (play.google.com ), but it certainly won't be a "one-size-fits-all" unit for everyone.  By the sounds of it, there will be several other units built by 3rd party manufacturers, with their own hardware running AndroidTV, hitting the market in the coming weeks/months ... perhaps one of them will be the ideal combination of features and flexibility.

Until then, I will be giving the Nexus Player a try, to see how well the reality matches the marketing." - ROSHFE Technologies

"I'm not a big fan of Apple but speaking honestly - they do a better job at optimizing hardware, software and pushing devs to do so. From the other side - why can't Google make better with android? Why do I need a phone with quad core CPU and 3 Gb RAM in order to feel smoothness of apps and interface comparable to iOS devices which by any tech spec is lower than flagship android devices? " - Oleg Atamanenko

"Another thing I don't like about Android is that each device does not always get an upgrade. There should be a single (or a small set eg. 32 and 64-bit) upgrade image that can be flashed on any device, just like I can download an Ubuntu ISO and install that on any computer. Android should be like that, truly hardware-agnostic. Also, Android phones are usually only supported for about a year." - Alex Jones

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