Android 5.0 "Lollipop" is the latest version of the Android mobile operating system developed by Google. Unveiled on June 25, 2014 during Google I/O, it became available through official over-the-air (OTA) updates on November 12, 2014, for select devices that run distributions of Android serviced by Google (such as Nexus and Google Play edition devices). Its source code was made available on November 3, 2014.
One of the most prominent changes in the Lollipop release is a redesigned user interface built around a design language referred to as "material design". Other changes include improvements to the notifications, which can be accessed from the lockscreen and displayed within applications as top-of-the-screen banners. Google also made internal changes to the platform, with the Android Runtime (ART) officially replacing Dalvik for improved application performance, and with changes intended to improve and optimize battery usage, known internally as Project Volta.
Android 5.0 introduces a refreshed notification system. Individual notifications are now displayed on cards to adhere to the material design language, and batches of notifications can be grouped by the app that produced them. Notifications are now displayed on the lock screen as cards, and "heads up" notifications can also be displayed as large banners across the top of the screen, along with their respective action buttons. A do-not-disturb feature is also added for notifications. The recent apps menu was redesigned to use a three-dimensional stack of cards to represent open apps. Individual apps can also display multiple cards in the recent menu, rather than only one entry per app; for example, a web browser can show all of its open tabs as individual cards.
Lollipop also contains major new platform features for developers, with over 5,000 new APIs added for use by applications. For example, there is the possibility to save photos in a raw image format.Additionally, the Dalvik virtual machine was officially replaced by Android Runtime (ART), which is a new runtime environment that was introduced as a technology preview in KitKat. ART is a cross-platform runtime which supports the x86, ARM, and MIPS architectures in both 32-bit and 64-bit environments. Unlike Dalvik, which uses just-in-time compilation (JIT), ART compiles apps upon installation, which are then run exclusively from the compiled version from then on. This technique removes the processing overhead associated with the JIT process, improving system performance.
Lollipop also aims to improve battery consumption through a series of optimizations known as "Project Volta". Among its changes are a new battery saver mode, job scheduling APIs which can restrict certain tasks to only occur over Wi-Fi, and batching of tasks to reduce the overall amount of time that internal radios are active. The new developer tool called "Battery Historian" can be used for tracking battery consumption by apps while in use. The Android Extension Pack APIs also provide graphics functions such as new shaders, aiming to provide PC-level graphics for 3D games on Android devices.
A number of system-level, enterprise-oriented features were also introduced under the banner "Android for Work": Samsung contributed its Knox security framework for segregating personal and work-oriented data from each other on a device, along with accompanying APIs for managing the environment. Devices can also be configured so that users do not have to unlock their device with a PIN or pattern if it is within a trusted, physical location, or is in proximity to a user's Android Wear device. Device encryption will be enabled by default.
Android 5.0 provides a faster, smoother and more powerful computing experience.
Android now runs exclusively on the new ART runtime, built from the ground up to support a mix of ahead-of-time (AOT), just-in-time (JIT), and interpreted code. It’s supported on ARM, x86, and MIPS architectures and is fully 64-bit compatible.
ART improves app performance and responsiveness. Efficient garbage collection reduces the number and duration of pauses for GC events, which fit comfortably within the v-sync window so your app doesn’t skip frames. ART also dynamically moves memory to optimize performance for foreground uses.
Android 5.0 introduces platform support for 64-bit architectures—used by the Nexus 9's NVIDIA Tegra K1. Optimizations provide larger address space and improved performance for certain compute workloads. Apps written in the Java language run as 64-bit apps automatically—no modifications are needed. If your app uses native code, we’ve extended the NDK to support new ABIs for ARM v8, and x86-64, and MIPS-64.
Continuing the focus on smoother performance, Android 5.0 offers improved A/V sync. The audio and graphics pipelines have been instrumented for more accurate timestamps, enabling video apps and games to display smooth synchronized content.
Android TV provides a complete TV platform for your app's big screen experience. Android TV is centered around a simplified home screen experience that allows users to discover content easily, with personalized recommendations and voice search.
With Android TV you can now create big, bold experiences for your app or game content and support interactions with game controllers and other input devices. To help you build cinematic, 10-foot UIs for television, Android provides a leanback UI framework in the v17 support library.
The Android TV Input Framework (TIF) allows TV apps to handle video streams from sources such as HDMI inputs, TV tuners, and IPTV receivers. It also enables live TV search and recommendations via metadata published by the TV Input and includes an HDMI-CEC Control Service to handle multiple devices with a single remote.
The TV Input Framework provides access to a wide variety of live TV input sources and brings them together in a single user interface for users to browse, view, and enjoy content. Building a TV input service for your content can help make your content more accessible on TV devices
Android 5.0 introduces all new camera APIs that let you capture raw formats such as YUV and Bayer RAW, and control parameters such as exposure time, ISO sensitivity, and frame duration on a per-frame basis. The new fully-synchronized camera pipeline allows you to capture uncompressed full-resolution YUV images at 30 FPS on supported devices.
In addition to giving greater control over image capture, the new APIs also expose detailed information about the camera's properties and capabilities and provide metadata that describes the capture settings of each frame.
Apps sending video streams over the network can now take advantage of H.265 High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) for optimized encoding and decoding of video data.
Android 5.0 also adds support for multimedia tunneling to provide the best experience for ultra-high definition (4K) content and the ability to play compressed audio and video data together
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