Google’s
website for Android One, the low-budget pure-Google smartphones by the
company, has revealed the existence of Android 5.1, which will be an
update on the latest 5.0.2 version Lollipop, says a report on The Verge.
Currently it is the Android One page for Indonesia which is showing the
Android 5.1 Lollipop update for these smartphones. We tried updating a
Spice Android One smartphone, but the Lollipop update had not yet rolled
out to users in India.
According
to Android Pit, new devices which are being shipped in Indonesia are
pre-loaded with Android 5.1. The site says that some of the new features
for Android 5.1 are: new silent mode, which was missing in Android 5.0,
general improvements in system stability, Improved RAM and battery
management. It also solves issues with WIFI, Okay Google as well as
notification issues. There are also “changes in the Material Design
color palette,” says the report.
According
to AndroidPolice, Nexus devices are also likely to get the update soon
and that Google has been testing Android 5.1 on Nexus 5, Nexus 6, etc.
While
the Android Lollipop 5.1 update sounds like a great idea, the fact that
India Android One users are still to get Android Lollipop update is
disappointing given that this was the market where Android One was
launched first with so much fanfare. Also regular updates were promised
when the phones launched.
We
had noted in the past that Android One has struggled to make sales in
India. The three phones produced by Micromax, Spice and Karbonn were
initially available exclusively online but as it did not set the cash
registers ringing, it was then made available to retailers across India.
Even major retailers refused to stock the phones.
The
Economic Times had reported that eight major electronics retailers in
India including Tata-owned Croma, Future Group, Planet MRetail and Next
Retail, BigC, Lot Mobiles, Reliance Retail and Sangeetha Mobiles, which
between them have 1,800 stores, had not stocked any of the three Android
One smartphones.
Where
Android Lollipop’s adoption goes, it is abysmally low even three months
after release. According to Google’s own data only 1.6 percent devices
are running Android Lollipop. Android 4.4 KitKat is running on 39.7
percent devices but Jelly Bean is still the most dominant if you were to
add all three versions of the OS. If you add Jelly Bean 1,2 and 3, it’s
currently running on 44.4 percent devices, which is a fairly high
number given that this is an OS that is more than two years old.
Hopefully
Google will start rectifying this anomaly and more people will get
Lollipop on their smartphones, including India’s Android One users.
Posted by : Gizmeon
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