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A evices

T

here are plenty of reasons to be excited about

the arrival of Android 5.0 Lollipop: a revamped

look, improved security features, lockscreen

notifi cations, a guest user mode, better battery

management, and so on. Yet the shine of Google’s

newest mobile operating system has been more

than a little tarnished by persistent problems with

the rollout of the software – unforeseen delays,

major bugs, bricked devices and user complaints

have all been causing headaches for Google and the

company’s Android engineers.

Built-in bugs

Android 5.0 was offi cially launched the moment

the Nexus 9 tablet went on sale on 3 November,

with owners of older Nexus devices expecting to

get their updates very shortly afterwards.

However, issues with a severe battery drain bug

meant that Google had to wait a couple of

weeks before pushing out the new software. The

problems didn’t stop once the software was

fi nally out in the wild either, with Nexus 5

phones particularly prone to errors: problems

with Wi-Fi connectivity, the new fl ashlight feature

crashing phone cameras, stuttering performance

and the disappearance of apps built with Adobe

Air have all been reported on online forums, in

Twitter feeds and via various media outlets. The

Adobe Air bug – where apps written with Adobe’s

software suddenly disappear or starting throwing

up error messages – is particularly mystifying,

and Adobe has already confi rmed in a blog post

that it is looking into the issue with Google’s

help.

Those users with a second-generation 2013

Nexus 7 tablet have experienced a bug where

video playback fails across all apps, and the issue

has appeared on devices that have received an

over-the-air update as well as ones that have

been fl ashed manually. Google, meanwhile, has

stayed mostly silent on the issues plaguing

Lollipop, though it would be fair to assume that

coders inside the company are busy trying to

address the teething problems that Android 5.

has so far experienced. In a number of short

statements, the tech giant has indicated that it’s

“looking into” the issues that are being reported.

“I regret downloading the update,” wrote one

disgruntled user in the offi cial Android support

forums. “My Nexus 7 is laggy, restarts and

crashes randomly, takes ages to navigate or open

THE

big

STORY

Has Android 5.0’s

‘unstable’ rollout

soured Lollipop?

Google’s Lollipop

problem

BATTERY

DRAIN

VIDEO

PLAYBACK

BUGS

SEVERED

WI-FI

CONNECTION

ROLLOUT

DELAYED BY

WEEKS

DISAPPEARING

ADOBE APPS

!