Ah yes, the waiting game. This sort of game gets played every time Google updates Android, which has historically been every 6 months or less, however there was a full year between Android 4.4 KitKat and Android 5.0 Lollipop’s release. Since Lollipop came out a few manufacturers have already pushed out the update, like Motorola, LG and Samsung, but many are still waiting for the Lollipop update on their phone. Samsung has only released Lollipop to the Galaxy S5 in Poland, but as we’ve seen from some reports of people wanting to downgrade back to Android 4.4 KitKat it almost feels like that build was rushed out to field test Samsung’s newest software update.
We saw that well over a month ago Samsung was testing out the Lollipop update on the Galaxy S4 as well as a number of other phones, and now today we’ve got another set of videos from SamMobile showing Android 5.0.1 Lollipop running on the Galaxy S5 LTE-A (the Korean variant), the Galaxy Note 4 and the Galaxy Note Edge. As we’ve seen from the Galaxy S4 and S5 videos Samsung is finally making their UI look exactly the same no matter what Samsung device you own, which is a breath of fresh air for anyone that’s been stuck on an “older” Samsung device while brand new Samsung phones get complete UI overhauls and new looks. This falls in line with a number of other manufacturers out there and it’s just generally great to see.
Feature wise parity is also being made with all the devices, minus the S-Pen functionality that’s exclusive to the Galaxy Note series for obvious reasons. Samsung has added a bunch of really nice new features like a contacts sharing section, an easy way to view all the storage available on your phone from the file management app, and a general UI refresh with plenty of Lollipop influence. The tinted status bar that Lollipop features has been turned that cool Samsung cyan blue for every single Samsung app, so Samsung apps are super easy to identify when switching between them in the new Lollipop recents screen. What’s also pretty amazing to see is how fast Samsung is updating the Galaxy Note Edge and even giving it quite a few new visual additions and a new camera UI to take even better advantage of that extra screen space, as well as making slow motion and fast motion a little easier to find. Check out the videos below for a preview and note that some of this stuff will change between now and the actual release, which is slated for Q1 2015.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7f2N_Dj2mg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiu8cdMIbyM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_dR-5ZKC2E