Android 5.1 Lollipop review: Google’s best OS is coming to the Asus ZenFone 2
Android 5.1 Lollipop review: Google’s best OS is coming to the Asus ZenFone 2
Update: The Asus ZenFone 2 ZE550ML is about to get an Android 5.1 update
Update: Google’s best mobile OS yet is already available on most Android handsets, and now it’s coming to Asus’ entry-level ZenFone 2.
Android 5 – or Android Lollipop as it is otherwise known – was first announced back in July, but it took a while for the first officially sanctioned Nexus devices running it to appear. Now that both of Google’s flagship Lollipop devices are out, and other manufacturers have started to roll out the software to older and entry-level handsets, we have a good idea of how the new software is shaping up – and it’s coming along very nicely indeed.
So what’s new with Android 5, and why is it so much better?
Android Lollipop review: look and feel
The most obvious change is the visual revamp. Although the navigational experience remains largely the same, the look is much brighter and more approachable than before. Slowly, but surely, Android has drawn level with iOS over the past few years, and in this version, we think the refinements have pushed it on ahead.
It’s all down to what Google has called “Material Design”: a new, cleaner look that, in conjunction with a revamped set of animations, gives the OS a more modern, more responsive feel. The design draws heavily on Google Now’s card-based design, with UI elements presented on square and rectangular elements that can be moved and dragged around.
Despite the cleaner, flatter visuals, though, there’s some depth to Android’s new visual approach: by allowing developers to specify the position of UI elements with Z (depth) as well as X and Y co-ordinates, Android L’s flat elements have the ability to rise and slide above the other elements, with subtle effects such as drop shadows giving the feeling there’s more to the OS than simply minimalism.
Android 5 review: notifications and lockscreen
This is most obvious in Android L’s revamped notifications system, which has been completely redesigned: before, notifications were largely white on black; now they’re displayed on collapsible and expandable rectangular “cards”. The quick settings area also sees a redesign and simplification. It’s accessible via a second pull-down on the notifications dropdown, or a two-fingered drag for instant access, and now includes a brightness slider and a grid of editable toggles for commonly used functions such as flight mode, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and auto-rotate.
These redesigned notifications also make it onto the lockscreen, where it’s now possible to scroll through them and expand, dismiss and launch into apps directly. With Google Now cards appearing at the bottom of the list, and quick settings also available here, it means you can get a lot done without even having to unlock your device.
It isn’t only the Notifications that have been perked up, however; the settings menu looks completely different, too. It now adapts to screen orientation and size, displaying settings in two columns rather than one where there’s enough space, and each subsection is now presented on a white “card” that appears to float in space.
The app drawer gets similar card-based treatment, while the Recent Apps view goes from a flat thumbnail view to a smoothly animated, Rolodex-style 3D carousel, now also including Chrome tabs. We’re not keen on this part of the redesign – with even a small handful of tabs open at once it quickly becomes over-full, and makes it tough to find what you’re looking for.
Perhaps the most extreme aspect of the redesign, however, comes with the new onscreen keyboard. This is now completely flat, with no visual distinction between the individual “keys” at all. It looks odd initially, but we found it easy to get used to; if anything, it feels more spacious than before, since you’re less worried about hitting the centre of each key, and so far it has had no negative impact on our typing accuracy or speed.
Security has been revisited, too. Android 5 now features full disk encryption by default on all devices that ship with Android 5 as standard, which means it will be more difficult for ne’er-do-wells to access your private data if your phone is stolen. Another benefit is that, when you carry out a factory reset – perhaps before sending your device back to the manufacturer for replacement, or selling it on – you can be sure your personal data won’t be left behind, easily recoverable.
There’s also the new Smart Lock feature, which allows your phone or tablet to be unlocked automatically when in proximity with another trusted device. It isn’t a new feature – we’ve seen something similar before on various Android smartphones – but it’s nice to have it baked into Android officially, and in Android 5 it’s more effective and has broader scope. Not only can you unlock your device by through Bluetooth pairing, but it’s also possible to set up trusted locations – the software offers Home and Work by default, but you can set up as many custom locations as you like through the Smart Lock settings.
Android Lollipop review: new runtime
However, all this is mere window dressing next to the most significant updates in Android 5: the introduction of the ART runtime, and improvements to battery life (see below for more details). The main difference between ART and the older Dalvik runtime is that it employs ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation, by which apps are translated to machine code on installation. This contrasts with in-time compilation, which compiles on an as-required basis. There’s also support for 64-bit CPUs.
The move to AOT should improve the speed at which apps launch and run and reduce stutter, at the cost of slower install times and a larger storage and memory footprint.
Android L certainly felt more responsive on our Nexus 7 than KitKat, with snappier, punchier transitions and animations and less judder all round, and it felt nothing other than lightning quick on the Nexus 9 and Nexus 6. We’d also hope that, with lower-power devices, the age-old problem of lag – most keenly felt when entering text via the onscreen keyboard – will be a thing of the past; we haven’t yet had the opportunity to run Android 5 on this sort of device yet, but will update the review when we do.
Headline benchmark figures, on the other hand, have so far showed no like-for-like improvement over the previous version of Android, although this perhaps shouldn’t be surprising. Since most benchmark utilities are built using native code they wouldn’t benefit from ART anyway.
Android 5 review: battery life
A bigger benefit of should be longer battery life, since AOT reduces CPU usage. And in conjunction with the new battery-saver mode, which kicks in at 15% (but can be tweaked if need be) and a number of other improvements, introduced under the “Project Volta” moniker, general stamina for Android 5 devices should see a major bump.
For example, Android won’t now wake up a device to carry out a network task when there’s no active network connection; it can group unimportant app tasks together and run them all at once, instead of waking up the device on demand; and there’s now the ability to delay housekeeping jobs until your tablet or phone is connected to the mains.
So far, with both the Nexus 9 and Nexus 6, the signs are good. Both devices exhibit excellent battery life, but the most significant improvement we’ve seen so far is in the retention of charge while the devices are in standby.
No longer, it seems, is Android a poor relation to Apple’s iOS in this regard; leave your Android 5 smartphone on the side overnight, and it’s likely to have a very similar level of charge the next morning. Leave your tablet in the cupboard while you’re away on a short trip, and (assuming it wasn’t on its last legs when you left) it will probably still be usable when you return.
Android Lollipop review: verdict
Overall, we feel that Android Lollipop is a major step forward for Google’s mobile OS. A slicker look and feel, combined with new features, improved performance and better battery life, should further strengthen Android’s hold over the smartphone and compact-tablet market. It’s a highly desirable update and one that we hope to see more manufacturers adopt in its pure state.
What’s new in Android 5.1?
Android 5 is a big step forward for Google’s mobile OS, but Google has never been one to rest on its laurels, and has already started to improve things with Android 5.1. It’s Lollipop’s first major maintenance release, and rolling out to Nexus devices, starting with the Nexus 6.
The update brings with it a handful of small improvements, most notably to performance. Google says it has boosted Lollipop’s encryption system – which on new devices comes enabled by default. The improvement should make your device feel a little snappier in day-to-day use. In real terms, it doesn’t feel as if this makes much difference – at least not on the Nexus 6 we’ve been running 5.1 on – but there is some benefit revealed in benchmarks.
On our test Nexus 6 we saw performance increase by 19% and 57% in the single-core and multi-core Geekbench 3 tests, and by 7% in SunSpider. Previously, we’d noted that the performance had deteriorated since we first tested the phone, but this update brings it back to factory-fresh speeds.
Elsewhere, the 5.1 update introduces a number of small interface changes. You now get dropdown arrows under the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth icons in the Notifications pulldown menu, which show you a quick list of networks and devices. It’s now also possible to tap an icon to adjust the alarm volume level while music is playing.
Other small touches include icon animations in the Clock app and on the rotation lock icon in the notifications menu, plus the new On-body unlock feature. Turn this on (it’s found in the Settings under Security > Smart Lock) and your Android device will remain unlocked as long as it detects it’s in your pocket, by monitoring the accelerometer for movement. We like this idea, and it works pretty well for the most part, but if you sit still at your desk it will lock itself if you sit still for longer than around 20 seconds.
There have been reports of bugs and crashes, including a fairly widely-reported memory leak problem, which is most seriously affecting Nexus 5 and 7 owners. Nexus 5 owners have been reporting problems with the camera app, which force closes when launched from a third-party app such as Facebook and Twitter.
On our review Nexus 6 we haven’t experienced anything quite so serious, but neither has our time with it been completely bug-free. The Gmail app crashes whenever we try to attach a file from local storage (though you can get around this issue by attaching from Google Drive), and we’ve also experienced a few infuriating spontaneous resets while playing the top-down shooter, Sky Force. Other than this, though, it’s been smooth driving so far; Android 5.1 looks as if it’s an update worth installing.
Google Photos and updated camera app
Android M may have stolen some of Lollipop’s limelight followingGoogle I/O, but one of the most interesting new products launched at the developers’ conference is available to try on Android Lollipop. Google Photos gives you unlimited cloud storage for photos and videos, along with a smart image-recognition system that makes searching through your images incredibly easy.
Google Photos intelligently categorises your pictures, meaning you can sift through snaps with keywords. Search for “sky” and you’ll get photos of the sky, search for “monkeys” and it’ll find any pictures you took of monkeys. It’s an impressive way to bring order to the multitude of photos we each store and forget about – and from our early tests, the accuracy of the search is scarily good.
Android’s Camera app may also soon gain a new feature. Version 2.5 of the app is now out and, according to Android Police, the update is paving the way for a new “Smart Burst” feature. Note that this isn’t confirmed, but if true it points to a handy feature that will see your phone burst-fire photos and automatically pick the best frames to use. That would be great for group shots, when you can normally count on at least one person blinking.
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