The
new Android L is far beyond just mobiles phones and tablets it powers your
watch, your TV and even your car. The songs, photos, apps, and even
recent searches from one of your Android devices can be immediately enjoyed
across all of your Android devices. With Lollipop, your tablet shows
your inbox alongside the message you have open, while your watch shows new
emails as they arrive. For fewer worries and disruptions, you can
adjust your settings so only certain people and notifications get through. You
can directly respond to important stuff from your lockscreen. Power
for the long haul with a battery saver feature that extends your device by up
to 90 minutes. And now it's easier to manage your power usage - see the
estimated time left before you need to charge, and when you're charging,
approximately how much time until it's topped up and ready to go. With the
added security you can share your device securely with guest user mode. Or
create multiple user accounts to enable friends to log in on your device. In
either case, no one will be able to access any of your stuff. And you can use
Android Smart Lock to secure your phone or tablet by pairing it with a trusted
device like your wearable or even your car.
Google has now
rolled out an API-complete updated preview for the Nexus 7 (2013). If you
have this device and you don’t mind factory resetting, you can experience the latest and greatest of Android in its nearly finished form. All you need are a few files and some
patience.
Before we get
started, this image will only works on the Nexus 7 2013 WiFi N7 released last
year (Razor). The 2012 Nexus 7 and the newer LTE variant are not supported by
this image.
Requirements:
1. A Windows based Computer (Xp-Vista-Win7-Win8) or MAC
2. Download and install ANDROID
SDK for the Computer to recognize the device.
4. Ensure the phone is atleast 60% charged.
Note: There is
some risk in doing this, but most mistakes can be undone by flashing the stock
image back on your device.
Procedure:
1. When you download
the Android L image, it will be a .tgz file. Use your favorite archiving
program (I like 7-Zip) to open that file and pull out the .tar file.
2. Do the same thing
with the .tar, but this time you’ll get a folder containing six files. Move all
of those directly into the platform-tools folder (that’s the one that will have
fastboot and ADB executables in them).
3. Power
off your Nexus 7 tablet. Now boot it into Fastboot mode by pressing ‘volume
down’ and ‘power’ buttons at the same time. When the ‘START’ text appears you
should connect your smartphone to your PC using the USB cable. Verify that your
device is detected properly by opening a command prompt (or terminal on Mac) in
the platform-tools folder from your Android SDK directory. Then type fastboot devices. If you see a serial
number, all is well. Remember, on a Mac most commands need to be prefaced with
a ‘./’ string. If you are not bootloader unlocked already, use fastboot
oem unlock from a
command prompt to unlock and reset the device. Get back into the bootloader to
proceed.
4. While you are connected
to computer via USB and in bootloader mode, launch the flash-all.bat (Windows)
or flash-all.sh (Mac) file. You may need to run these as administrator.
A window will
appear and tell you that it’s pushing files over to the device, then it writes
the new system data and (hopefully) installs Android L. Don’t worry if you get
errors about recovery.sig and boot.sig being missing. This might still fail the
first time, but don’t worry–you can just run the script again.
When the flashing
has completed, your phone or tablet will reboot. It’s going to take at least
five minutes for the first boot into Android 5.0 Lollipop. If something goes
sideways, you can always get back into the bootloader and try the flash again.
Remember, this is a still developer preview, just a more polished one. There
might be a few bugs and broken features, but this image is supposed to let
developers make sure their apps are ready to go once the final build starts
rolling out next month.
If everything went
fine you will be enjoying the latest of the Android on your device for your
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