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Android 5.0 Lollipop announced

Does Lollipop have its own version of Continuity? I have a Macbook Air, an iPad Air and a Samsung Galaxy S4 (and a Windows 8 PC, too) so if Google can't have the same level of device communication I'm considering buying an iPhone. It's a shame because Lollipop does seem nice.
 

Nicktendo86

Member
Does Lollipop have its own version of Continuity? I have a Macbook Air, an iPad Air and a Samsung Galaxy S4 (and a Windows 8 PC, too) so if Google can't have the same level of device communication I'm considering buying an iPhone. It's a shame because Lollipop does seem nice.
Android seems to have been doing a lot of that sort of stuff for years with hangouts, keep etc.
 

Sch1sm

Member
Does Lollipop have its own version of Continuity? I have a Macbook Air, an iPad Air and a Samsung Galaxy S4 (and a Windows 8 PC, too) so if Google can't have the same level of device communication I'm considering buying an iPhone. It's a shame because Lollipop does seem nice.


Android seems to have been doing a lot of that sort of stuff for years with hangouts, keep etc.

Yeah, we essentially have GAPPS seamless with our gmail accounts, but we can't exactly accept phone calls on our devices with our laptops since Google hasn't really given us much other than Chromecast. It's probably a long time coming, but even Continuity for Apple is imperfect currently. Wait until iOS 8.1, see the reviews, then decide on making the switch.
 

NotBacon

Member
Does Lollipop have its own version of Continuity? I have a Macbook Air, an iPad Air and a Samsung Galaxy S4 (and a Windows 8 PC, too) so if Google can't have the same level of device communication I'm considering buying an iPhone. It's a shame because Lollipop does seem nice.

Not specifically. But you can replicate it with Hangouts, Google Drive, and Pushbullet. Do a little research and see if that's close enough for you.
 

DrFurbs

Member
Ok, Google, I'm not sure about this one:



Couldn't you have made the pull-down a bit wider in landscape? Now you have to scroll through it, and it feels a bit silly when there's all this wasted space on the sides.


You just flash the 4.4.4 image. But why would you do that? Why not directly flash the final 5.0 image once it's available?

I read it as him wanting to go back to KK so he can get the OTA update to L. Which is one option, but an unnecessary extra step IMO. I'll just be going straight from the preview to the final release. But maybe you're right!


I'm sorry, yes this is what I meant. So I can flash the official one over it. Perfect thank you x
 

snacknuts

we all knew her
Does Lollipop have its own version of Continuity? I have a Macbook Air, an iPad Air and a Samsung Galaxy S4 (and a Windows 8 PC, too) so if Google can't have the same level of device communication I'm considering buying an iPhone. It's a shame because Lollipop does seem nice.

Let's take a look at the features.
  • Phone calls on your computer - If you use Google Voice, you have been able to do this for years. If not, no feature parity that I know of.
  • SMS on your computer - Same as above. I don't know if using Hangouts to handle SMS on your phone with your carrier number allows you to access those message on your computer like it does with Google Voice.
  • Handoff - Since this apparently only works with Apple apps at the moment, I feel it's fair to point out that you can do this on Android with Google services (and have been able to for some time.
  • AirDrop/file transfer - With Google Drive and other services, you don't really need this. And while not natively built into Android, AirDroid is free and does this extremely well.
  • Instant hotspot - No feature parity that I know of.

It bears mentioning that all of this cross-platform stuff with Android is not platform dependent insofar as the PC side of things is concerned. It doesn't even have to be your own computer; you can login to your Google account on any computer anywhere and have access to all of this stuff.
 

kyongwon

Banned
im in love with lollipop and the nexus 5. thank goodness they released the info before i was about to take the plunge for a note 4
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Let's take a look at the features.
  • Phone calls on your computer - If you use Google Voice, you have been able to do this for years. If not, no feature parity that I know of.
  • SMS on your computer - Same as above. I don't know if using Hangouts to handle SMS on your phone with your carrier number allows you to access those message on your computer like it does with Google Voice.

There is no built-in support for any of these things if you don't have a GVoice number (which you don't unless you're in the US). Hangouts doesn't sync SMS messages to your PC, they are 100% local to your phone. So you have to use 3rd party apps for these things if you're outside the US. That's pretty much my biggest complaint at the moment. I mean, how hard can it be to sync my texts and let my access them through Hangouts on my PC? There are loads of 3rd party apps that do it, but apparently Google can't figure it out. Or maybe they just want everyone to use GVoice. Uhm, yeah, hello, rest of the world calling!
 

NotBacon

Member
Let's take a look at the features.
  • Phone calls on your computer - If you use Google Voice, you have been able to do this for years. If not, no feature parity that I know of.
  • SMS on your computer - Same as above. I don't know if using Hangouts to handle SMS on your phone with your carrier number allows you to access those message on your computer like it does with Google Voice.
  • Handoff - Since this apparently only works with Apple apps at the moment, I feel it's fair to point out that you can do this on Android with Google services (and have been able to for some time.
  • AirDrop/file transfer - With Google Drive and other services, you don't really need this. And while not natively built into Android, AirDroid is free and does this extremely well.
  • Instant hotspot - No feature parity that I know of.

It bears mentioning that all of this cross-platform stuff with Android is not platform dependent insofar as the PC side of things is concerned. It doesn't even have to be your own computer; you can login to your Google account on any computer anywhere and have access to all of this stuff.

Pushbullet
 

Majine

Banned
Google Drive and Airdrop are not exactly the same thing. Drive is a cloud space, while Airdrop is device to device. I've come to really appreciate the raw speed of sending something from one device to another and it immediately pops up on the screen, instead of uploading everything to the cloud and then having to go hunt for it.
 

snacknuts

we all knew her
Google Drive and Airdrop are not exactly the same thing. Drive is a cloud space, while Airdrop is device to device. I've come to really appreciate the raw speed of sending something from one device to another and it immediately pops up on the screen, instead of uploading everything to the cloud and then having to go hunt for it.

I know they're not the same thing, but I refuse to believe that most people need this so often that it's a deal-breaker feature for one mobile OS over another.
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Google Drive and Airdrop are not exactly the same thing. Drive is a cloud space, while Airdrop is device to device. I've come to really appreciate the raw speed of sending something from one device to another and it immediately pops up on the screen, instead of uploading everything to the cloud and then having to go hunt for it.

For something closer to how Airdrop works, try out Pushbullet. You push a file, message, or whatever, from one device to another, and it automatically pops up on the screen of the receiving device. It's not technically device-to-device, as it does use Amazon S3 for storing the stuff you push, but it's still very fast in my experience.
 

RuGalz

Member
For something simple like one image, or one link, built in Android beam works well. To share larger amount of data between two phones, SuperBeam works pretty well. I prefer having share option that doesn't require online connection, which ironically, air drop does if you want to use contact list for filtering.
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
For something simple like one image, or one link, built in Android beam works well.

To another phone with NFC, sure. But that doesn't help you if you want to quickly send something over to your PC, or the other way around. Pushbullet is great for that.
 

RuGalz

Member
To another phone with NFC, sure. But that doesn't help you if you want to quickly send something over to your PC, or the other way around. Pushbullet is great for that.

Does it handle multiple accounts and multiple phones each owned by different people? Sharing computer on same account and having multiple phones makes a lot of these apps not work so well than just dump files into my Google drive so that I know it's at the right place.
 

abracadaver

Member
I have no idea what "Material Design" is supposed to be. The Apps still look the same to me.

Also I don't understand the notification system or whats new about it. I'm using Nils notifications but its still not as good as on iOS. And why don't they support the small red bubbles for unread messages on apps? Samsung phones have them.

Does the calendar now finally show the actual date in its icon?
 

northead

Member
I have no idea what "Material Design" is supposed to be. The Apps still look the same to me.
Watch this video.
It's simply delightful and makes you really understand what Material actually is.

Also I don't understand the notification system or whats new about it. I'm using Nils notifications but its still not as good as on iOS. And why don't they support the small red bubbles for unread messages on apps? Samsung phones have them.
The new notifications appear in the lockscreen as cards you can swipe away or interact with. You can also set a "Priority" mode where only certain (manually) selected apps get through during a specific amount of time.
Nils is not a great third party solution; if you want something really interesting, try AcDisplay. It's got quite a few awesome features.

Does the calendar now finally show the actual date in its icon?
No it doesn't; but the Calendar app itself is really, really bad.
I suggest that you take a look at Sunrise; it does have the animated icon and it's also an amazing all-around calendar application.
 

Mindwipe

Member
Airdrop isn't really required on Android as Bluetooth and ad-hoc WiFi networks are supported with file system visibility.
 

NotBacon

Member
I have no idea what "Material Design" is supposed to be. The Apps still look the same to me.

Also I don't understand the notification system or whats new about it. I'm using Nils notifications but its still not as good as on iOS. And why don't they support the small red bubbles for unread messages on apps? Samsung phones have them.

Does the calendar now finally show the actual date in its icon?

Lock screen notifications are coming with Lollipop. Most of the MD apps are coming in Lollipop too. And red bubbles are old bad design, learn to use the notification shade.
 
only thing missing in the wifi area with android is something i had in my nokia n8 that if for some reason the wifi signal you were connected didnt send anymore data because lets say your ISP was having some problems etc it would automatically switch to mobile data/turn off wifi

at the very least i havent found this kind of feature in any of the versions even in custom roms as small it is, it was fucking awesome and a no brainer
 

JMDSO

Unconfirmed Member
only thing missing in the wifi area with android is something i had in my nokia n8 that if for some reason the wifi signal you were connected didnt send anymore data because lets say your ISP was having some problems etc it would automatically switch to mobile data/turn off wifi

at the very least i havent found this kind of feature in any of the versions even in custom roms as small it is, it was fucking awesome and a no brainer

That is apparently part of 5.0 now.
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Does it handle multiple accounts and multiple phones each owned by different people? Sharing computer on same account and having multiple phones makes a lot of these apps not work so well than just dump files into my Google drive so that I know it's at the right place.

I haven't tried using it with multiple accounts on my phone, but there's an account switcher in the app, so I'm gonna say yes. And you can also push things to any contact, not just between your own devices. So I'd say your scenarios are pretty much covered?
 

sca2511

Member
Looks like the Nexus 4 has had a custom build of L from the preview along with N6 apps/framework. A person on 4chan's /g/ claims their battery went down 4% in 12 hours idle.

XDA
 

Schrade

Member
I would love to see the RAW outputs of all the different cameras in all the different phones that are out there. Some of the phones sound like they have awesome cameras in them but when I saw photos from them they'd look like overprocessed and overcompressed shit.

Bring on that RAW, Google L!
 

Shouta

Member
If they fixed the battery problem from 4.4.3 and 4.4.4 then I'll consider upgrading but the entire reason why I downgraded back to 4.4.2 was because of drain. I hope they figured it out >=(
 

kehs

Banned
Yes. CM plan to have 5.0 within 90 days of the source being released.

There's something funny about all these hardware companies giving the 90 day figure.

It used to be they all had different timelines. Did google finally get their ota pipeline in order?
 

NotBacon

Member
If they fixed the battery problem from 4.4.3 and 4.4.4 then I'll consider upgrading but the entire reason why I downgraded back to 4.4.2 was because of drain. I hope they figured it out >=(

Dude. Lollipop has huge battery gains and improvements EVERYWHERE.
 

Sch1sm

Member
If they fixed the battery problem from 4.4.3 and 4.4.4 then I'll consider upgrading but the entire reason why I downgraded back to 4.4.2 was because of drain. I hope they figured it out >=(

4.4.4 didn't make it much better, sadly.
 

Bsigg12

Member
There's something funny about all these hardware companies giving the 90 day figure.

It used to be they all had different timelines. Did google finally get their ota pipeline in order?

CM(CyanogenMod) isn't a hardware company.
 
They have been behind on all their updates so don't expect 90 days to be accurate.

Nightlies should be pretty quick though.

I'm itching for these nightlies man. People are trying to get a rom of the lolipop preview from a few days ago, but I think the problem is kernel related according to xda.
 

RuGalz

Member

That's pretty awful editing, which isn't the fault of camera.

I haven't tried using it with multiple accounts on my phone, but there's an account switcher in the app, so I'm gonna say yes. And you can also push things to any contact, not just between your own devices. So I'd say your scenarios are pretty much covered?

I guess I will give it a shot next time I need that function. For my use case, peer to peer is all I need.
 

DarkFlow

Banned
I'm itching for these nightlies man. People are trying to get a rom of the lolipop preview from a few days ago, but I think the problem is kernel related according to xda.
I wouldn't doubt that. CM has to make there kernel special so it's not the same as AOSP.
 
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