Most Chinese phones might still be shipping with Android KitKat, but the grass certainly looks greener on the Western side of the hemisphere.
Google today officially announced Android v5.1 Lollipop, with incremental changes over the existing v5.0 iteration. Other than the typical ‘stability and performance’ improvements, Android v5.1 Lollipop brings the much needed support for dual SIM card phones. Android phones have been running dual SIMs since forever, but this is the first time that Android will support the feature natively, i.e., without requiring additional modifications from OEMs.
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The other couple of things that v5.1 Lollipop brings is support for what Google calls ‘HD voice’, which, however, works only between phones that both run v5.1 Lollipop. Since security and privacy are among the fastest growing concerns, Google also brings in Device Protection, wherein if your device gets stolen/misplaced, it requires your Google credentials to be inputted to unlock. This works even if the device is factory resetted, which is what brings the most value as far as I’m concerned.
As always, Nexus devices — namely the Nexus 4, 5 and 7 — are the first ones to get this update. Chinese phones might, however, take a while before getting the v5.1 Lollipop update.
[ Source]
Finally!
Sounds pretty promising. But before this will be seen on any China phone we’re months away from now 🙁
Just the way with these phones usually 🙁 at least its better than before, 2 generations ago with the MTK6589 phones, pretty much none had more than 4.2.1 or 4.2.2 while western phones had 4.4.4 for quite some time. At the moment manufacturers seem to be trying to keep it atleast 1 version behind with plenty of phones being shipped with 4.4.4 for quite some time while lollipop was out. Now that 5.1 is almost out, a whole lot of chinese phones are supposedly going to have OTA updates to 5.0.
So you never know, maybe in another 2 years will be able to match Qualcomm and Samsung in that respect. They’re already about there in regards to SoC performance!
I do see the first customs ROM’s for the Ecoo E04 Aurora poppin’ up. So I have high hopes that one day the 5.1 update can be installed through some other dev 🙂
Android 5.1 already shipped with android one device in indonesia.
So all indonesia android one device owner has this already.
Finally!