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Sony has been rolling out Android 5.1 updates intermittently ever since last July... up to and past the point where Android 6.0's AOSP code has been available to manufacturers. The last few devices that received bumps to 5.1 were the Xperia C4 and C5 Ultra earlier this month, and today the Xperia M5 gets the same treatment. Users can wait for the over-the-air update alert in the usual manner, or use Sony's PC Companion computer program to download and install the update manually.
We're well past the point where any Android enthusiast would be expecting (or perhaps more accurately hoping) that his or her phone will be getting an update full of Marshmallowy goodness, perhaps delivered by some confectionary fairy. Alas, for owners of the Xperia C4 and Xperia C5 Ultra, it's a bag full of Lollipops instead. Both phones are now being updated by Sony to Android 5.1, a version of the OS which we'll remind you is now almost a year old.
Android updates are in the spotlight again, thanks to Motorola's questionable dedication to its own recent products. And while you can (usually) count on at least one or two software updates for most flagship phones, sometimes a low-end device comes back and surprises you. Such is the case with the Galaxy Core Prime, a Verizon exclusive in the US which launched with Android 4.4 back in February. At the time the relatively small and underpowered budget phone was promised an update to Lollipop. Quoting David earlier this year: "Oh, and it actually comes with a promise of a Lollipop upgrade, so that's good, though how long it'll take is anyone's guess."
HTC's ROM Update Utilities, better known as RUUs, are all-in-one Windows programs that install official software versions for HTC phones. The latest one is the official Android 5.1 update for the flagship One M9 Developer Edition, allowing an easy path back to stock software. That's especially important for the Developer Edition, since its unlockable bootloader encourages custom ROMs and other modifications. Grab the 2GB file here (direct link) if you want it.
Owners of Developer Edition phones are the most dedicated of Android enthusiasts, they who eschew the traditional carrier model and put their money where their mouths are for the sake of total control and the principles of open-source operating systems. (Also, I suppose a few of them might be actual software developers. You never know.) For those who've purchased the Developer Edition of HTC's 2015 flagship, the update to Android 5.1 is going out right now.
The original Moto X signaled a major design shift for Motorola, and the company has done an admirable job keeping the device updated to the latest versions of Android so far. The Moto X 2013 is now seeing its first Android 5.1 updates, specifically for the unlocked retail models in the United States and Brazil plus the Rogers carrier version sold in Canada, according to Motorola manager David Schuster. This comes after a few weeks of soak tests.
Just about a week after Motorola released update notes for the second version of its Moto E budget handset, it looks like the Lollipop 5.1 update is indeed hitting the airwaves. Multiple posters on XDA have alerted their fellow users that the update (version XT1527, if you're wondering) has reached their phones. Thanks to the Moto E's off-contract nature, it should hit users on all carriers at the same time.
To say that Nexus 9 owners are somewhat miffed that Google's flagship tablet is currently lagging several versions behind the latest Android release is something of an understatement. The Nexus 9's slow software update rollout, well behind the rest of the Nexus line and even some third-party devices, is as odd as it is irritating. But according to an official Google Twitter post (update: Google+ too), the wait should be over today. Sort of.
When a new version of Android hits, we want to know what's inside of its candy-coated shell. One of the best ways to discover all of the new treats is to read through the developer comments located in the Android Open Source Project. We've downloaded the code and generated a changelog of every single modification made between v5.1.0_r5 (LMY47O) and the newly released v5.1.1_r1 (LMY47V).
If you're a ROM developer, or just in the mood to poke around the latest Android source code, you'll be excited to know that 5.1.1 has just been uploaded to AOSP. The tag for this release is 5.1.1_r1, and it carries the build number LMY47V. A factory image is already available for the Nexus Player, and the rest of the Nexus family will probably stabilize on this version over the coming weeks.
Some over-the-air updates just began their rollout to the Nexus 4 and 2013 Nexus 7 LTE, bringing their build versions up to LMY47O. If you're curious about what's actually different, we've generated a changelog with all of the gory details. That is to say, not much has changed. Sadly, the list of commits is limited to fixing a handful of relatively trivial and uncommon bugs.
It should come as no surprise that Android is due for a v5.1.1 release at some point, even if only to fix a particularly well-known memory leak. Now, thanks to an SDK update, we've got good reason to anticipate the new version is probably due out in the very near future. If developers check the SDK Manager for updates, they should see a new revision to the Platform SDK with a product description that reads "Android SDK Platform 5.1.1."
In good Android tradition, every major version is followed by a series of build releases intended to quickly fix a small batches of issues. These updates usually come out to cure critical bugs, but sometimes they're just cleaning up a few relatively trivial mistakes. AOSP was just updated with a brand new version, tagged 5.1.0_r3. We've generated a changelog to show just what's different.
Yesterday, HTC's Mo Versi, the Vice President of Product Management, caused a few disgruntled sighs from the company's fans and One M7 owners by announcing that the two-year-old device wouldn't get any more major updates, including Android 5.1. That didn't apply to the Google Play Edition version of the M7, which is still set to get 5.1 in April.
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With the code for Android 5.1 Lollipop now fully uploaded to the Android Open Source Project, it's time to hunt for new features and capabilities that we haven't already uncovered. With a total of 14,686 changes, there's a lot to look through in the latest changelog. A few very telling commit messages have already been discovered, but there are surely many more interesting messages waiting to be found.
Google is progressively rolling out the full array of releases for Android 5.1, and the SDK is now joining the ranks. If developers open up the SDK Manager today, they will find a brand new software development kit for API 22. The SDK package is there, along with the typical documentation, samples, source code, and an assortment of system images for each of the major hardware architectures. All is ready to start updating apps to take advantage of everything Android 5.1 has to offer.
As if it wasn't already news, Apple announ... Android 5.1 is officially launching today. While the latest version already made its debut on a few Android One phones, the rest of us have been (impatiently) waiting for our chance to check it out on some Nexus hardware. We're still looking for OTA packages and factory images, but it looks like Google is already busy uploading the source code to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP).
Android 5.1 is finally here, at least according to Google (they'd know, right?). The company just posted on the official Android blog that the 5.1 Lollipop update begins rolling out today, though they didn't quite specify which devices will be getting it. Granted, if it's a Nexus or GPE phone and it already has Android 5.0, you can probably count yourself in for the 5.1 party - this release is mostly bug fixes with a few features rolled in (see our feature spotlights for 5.1 here for some of them).