LONDON: There have been a lot of reports of Android 5.1 Lollipop update over the last few days. At first it seemed like a typo, but as we see more photographic proof, it is starting to seem like a reality.
The first hint that we saw was in a Google Twitter post that announced Android One was headed to Indonesia. As you can see in the image here, we get the subtle hint in the time, as it reads 5:10. We have seen Google do this multiple times in the past. When Android 4.2 was announced they used the time 4:20; when Android 5.0 was announced, they used the time 5:00. This is just something that Google has a history of doing. This image also appeared on Google’s official Android One page and this also mentioned Android 5.1 in the text (which has since been removed).
Android 5.1 Lollipop Update
Then we started seeing photos like this one that show one of the new Android One devices. This image is a device that was directly pulled out of a retail box and it has Android 5.1 Lollipop pre-installed on it. If we take this build number, LMY29F, and plug it into the build date calculator, we can see that this was built on or around January 29th. This is a very recent build of Android Lollipop.
There are also brand new builds that are starting to appear in the server logs for various Android related websites. Android Police has reported that the build numbers LMY29C, LMY29D, and LMY29E have popped up for the Nexus 5, Nexus 6, and the Nexus 9 devices. What is interesting to me though is that Google has decided to go from 5.0.2 to 5.1. If it were just a bug fix update, then it most likely would have been called 5.0.3. Unless this update includes so many bug fixes that Google feels the need to call it 5.1, we could be seeing some new features with this particular update.