This week appears to be the week of Android Nougat landing on devices that launched earlier this year. Lenovo pushed out Android 7.0 Nougat to the Moto Z and Moto Z Force today (it actually started this week, but became official today), Huawei began their beta of Nougat on the Honor 8 today, and now the Sprint variant of the LG G5 is getting the latest version of Android. The update to Android Nougat is a pretty large one, coming in at about 1.3GB in size, it also brings in quite a few changes, even with LG’s skin on top.
The update brings an interface that looks very similar to what LG has on the V20, with a condensed section for Quick Toggles – instead of showing the icon and the name of it, it just shows the toggle. It also looks a bit more like AOSP than traditional Optimus UI that LG uses. Of course, themes are still compatible, so you can get rid of that boring white and black look if you wish to do so. LG did also build in a DPI changer, this means you’ll be able to make everything on the LG G5 larger or smaller. It’s a feature that you don’t see too often on other smartphones, but it is nice to have.
Other features that Google built into Nougat are also here, like multi-window (although we’re still unsure of how this works with LG’s already existing multi-window feature – i.e. if they are killing their feature in favor of Google’s implementation), as well as Quick Reply, enhanced Doze and much more. It’s a rather nice update, and it’s great to see that a number of features that Google built into Nougat are still here, and actually accessible to the user. Something that hasn’t always been the case with other versions of Android when they land on heavily-themed devices like the LG G5.
Sprint is pushing out the update now, so you can head into Settings > About Phone > System Updates and Check for System Updates. The update brings in November’s security patch as well, which is the latest patch from Google. Remember to connect to WiFi before downloading, as this is a large 1.3GB file and will likely be faster to download over WiFi than over 4G LTE.
