Android 5.0 Lollipop is now official, with Material Design, ART, power saving and more

After months of using the Android L release moniker, Google has finally revealed Android 5.0 Lollipop. The fifth major release of Android brings several new features and improvements, along with a brand new user interface.

For Android 5.0 Lollipop, Google has redesigned the user interface of the platform in a pretty thorough manner. In terms of UI structure - little has changed, but most visual elements have been tweaked to utilize Google's new Material Design paradigm. In a move that aims to improve user experience and provide consistency across different form factors in the vast Android ecosystem, Android 5.0 Lollipop's Material Design makes the platform look more mature and polished than ever. Not only is the graphical user interface supposed to look better, but the system's overall response and fluidity have also been improved. The performance enhancements come courtesy of the new ART runtime, which is now the default one (ART was available as an alternative runtime in Android 4.4 KitKat).

		Android 5.0 Lollipop - New Features Detailed
		When will my device receive Android 5.0 Lollipop

Google has designed Lollipop to deliver a more consistent experience across different devices, and is expected to make the multi-device experience a modern and seamless one. It will offer a "continuity" feature similar to the one offered on iOS 8, which will allow you to "pick up where you left off", according to Google. While this should generally refer to a phone and tablet, this implementation may also be offered between Android Wear devices.

While the Material Design elements of Android L will offer a more consistent feel across different devices, different device types (phones, tablets, watches), will rely on different UI solutions - ones that will try to get the most out of their respective assets. For example, the tablet UI will show more options and content than a phone, making use of the larger screen. Meanwhile, the watch will stay away from displaying too much info, and will focus more on delivering useful notifications to its owner, as seen in the picture just above.

Android Lollipop will also offer enhanced notifications, which will be delivered nearly and separately directly to your lockscreen. These notifications will be more flexible to work with, as you will be able to interact with them directly from your lockscreen itself.

One of the more notable enhancements Lollipop is its battery saver mode. This mode will aim to squeeze out up to 90 additional minutes of usage time out of your battery. The power management aspect of the operating system will also benefit from some new data that's going to be accessible from the battery settings screen. Users will be able to see how much time the battery has left at their current battery level, as well as how much time is left before the device is fully charged, while connected to a charger.

A new guest user mode that's making a debut in Android 5.0 Lollipop has the purpose of letting you safely share your Android phone or tablet with another user. Naturally, the idea here is to prevent that other user from seeing all of your private content.

Android 5.0 Lollipop will be available out-of-the-box on the Nexus 6 and Nexus 9, and will soon arrive as a free update to the Nexus 4, Nexus 5, Nexus 7, and Nexus 10. The Google Play Edition devices will also see a quick update to Android 5.0 along with the Moto X, Moto G and Moto E. Other manufacturers will also offer the Android 5.0 Lollipop update to their devices, and we will be sharing their update plans in the days ahead.