Taking the final wrapper off of Android 7.0 Nougat (opens in new tab)

This. Battery life on my Nexus 6P is just fine, at least equal to my friends with their iPhone 6 Pluses. My Note 4 also had solid battery life before that. For the most part, modern Android phones are much better than their predecessors in terms of battery. The UX is also quite nice as well.

The iPhone SE is similarly priced and iOS devices receive updates for more than 3 years. iPhone 5 for instance got and runs fine iOS 9, 4 years after release.

The only thing I'd add here is that unfortunately the Nexus 5x is not an upgrade over the 5 in terms of performance. It might even be a downgrade (I own both). Because the 5x uses a 64-bit arch, it uses more RAM than the 5x (and both only have 2GB). Also, the SD808 (2GHz) cores in the 5x are hardly a step up from the SD800 (2.2GHz) cores. The only real upgrade the 5x gives you is the camera.

The Nexus 5X has no wireless inductive charging. My nice little Yootech charger sitting on my desk is useless with my wife's 5X. Those cool "charging tables" at Starbucks and other such places are suddenly useless, as well.

Also, 5X uses the USB-C connector, so you have to update all your cables and adapters on your desk and in your car. A real pain. When you're out in the world and need a charge-up, you'd better be carrying a USB-C cable, because no one else will have one.

I consider the 5X a side-grade and not of any particular value if you already have a 5. The 6P is at least a larger handset with a larger battery so it's got that going for it.

There has to be some nasty security vulnerabilities lurking on that phone. There have been a lot of security patches to Android over the past 2.5 years to fix various exploits. I'm sure it does run great, but I would personally be uncomfortable missing out on so many security fixes.

I don't pay a lot of attention to the Android OS, but I do recall there was a nasty exploit discovered about a year ago (called Stagefright) where a specially-crafted text message with a picture or image can cause malicious code to be run on the phone the moment the phone receives the message.

I have an Android ADP1 --- one of the original development phones, the HTC Dream with the custom paint job. It's got 192MB of RAM and a single-core 528MB ARM11. It ran Cupcake, aka Android 1.5 (although I've since upgraded it to,

If you ignore the hilarious security bugs --- like the fact that, as shipped, they forgot to disconnect the keyboard from a root shell, so that if you typed 'reboot' into an email hilarious things happened --- it actually runs rather well; it's smooth and perfectly satisfactory to use.

...holy crap Cupcake would run well on a modern phone.

Classic "don't fix it if it ain't broken". How have you manage to disable the System update annoyance ?

Shitty Lollipop made me sell the Nexus 5 last year with its bad battery life and memory leak (and they still didn't fix the mobile radio wakelock), but when downgrading to 4.4 it was next to impossible to block the notification. I remember methods used at time just caused the Google Play Services to hold the wakelock, since the update checker became a part of it.

That phone was eons better than my 5x, and cheaper. Only got rid of it due to physical damage.

I'm really not impressed with the Nexus 5x at all compared to every other Nexus phone Ive had (2 others), both from a price and general performance perspective.

Another alternative would be to keep releasing security updates. If open source projects can manage more than three years support, it's not out of the question for Google to do it, at least for the major versions.

Do old versions of iOS receive security updates?

The Nexus 5x should be great for you. It's a 5-inch screen and may have a couple more years of new Android versions left in it. Or better yet, wait for the new Nexus phones set to be released this year. Should add another year of Android support from Google.

The Nexus 6(p) is the phablet line. The Nexus 5(x) is a normal form factor.

I've owned both the 5 and 6, it's definitely a matter of preference. The Nexus 5x would probably be closer to what you are looking for.

Indeed. The Nexus 5 was not expensive relative to the iOS devices he is consider getting. 3 years worth of updates was just about worth the device's price.

On another note I hated the Nexus 5 and that LCD screen always felt washed out!

But the update experience on flagships (except if you count the Nexus 6P) is absolutely terrible. I had an Android excursion: Nexus 4 -> Moto X 2013 -> Moto X 2014. Motorola was known at the time for quick updates. This meant in practice that they pushed out an extremely buggy Android 5.0 quickly, and then waited half a year to push out a release with fixes. On the Moto X 2013 I had to wait more than a year (!) for Lollipop, although at the time of release the phone was only released a year ago.

tl;dr Android updates on non-Nexus flagships are terrible. Updates are typically months late and stop after 12 or 18 months.

> Battery life sucks on Android flagship phones

> $200 phones that get spectacular battery life on stock Android because they ... are unburdened by poorly designed launchers written by enterprisey Java devs.

Are you saying that there are launchers / home screens that are _better_ than stock android in some dimension? I'm interested to hear more.

My 2013 Nexus 7 is perfectly fine... except for now being left behind, software-wise.

I bought once / as soon as I learned that its successor had not been worth waiting for. So, I got significantly less than 3 years out of it. Would have bought the successor, except...

Guess I'll be rooting it. And buying Apple, next time.

Nexus 5 launch price: US$349

iPhone 5 launch price: US$649

A phone nearly twice the price should be supported quite a lot longer.

And Qualcomm, etc. They tend to support their own chips for about 18 months.

> Not really surprising given the device's age

Nexus 5 released late 2013, last major OS update in late 2015. Compare to the iPhone 4S, which came out late 2011 and still got iOS 9 (4 years later).

Really not buying the "two years is plenty of updates" excuse, especially from the Nexus line.

It'll be a bummer not using latest android for the first time in many years (HTC G2 -> Nexus 4 -> Nexus 5), but I really can't imagine anything compelling me to pay hundreds of dollars for a new phone for a couple more years. The Nexus 5 has been practically the perfect phone for me.

The biggest feature I'm looking for that the newer Nexuses don't have over my N5/N7 is Qi wireless charging. My Nexus 7's USB port has been broken for over a year now, and I've been using a wireless charger all this time. It just seems like a good idea to reduce the wear and tear on the USB ports if I want to continue using the phone for years.

> Not really surprising given the device's age, but still disappointing given the presumably rather large number of Nexus 5 still in use.

My Nexus 5 was in use up until a couple of weeks ago. Then it entered a state where, when plugged in, it rebooted in an eternal loop and, when not plugged in, it shut off. Judging by the internet, this is a common problem for them.

I followed the advice I found in multiple places of trying to dislodge the Nexus 5's stuck power button by whacking it against a soft object. That worked -- it will now try to boot, fail to mount the hard drive, and just keep displaying the booting animation forever. It can boot into the bootloader and recovery mode, and I can flash a new recovery image in fastboot, or at least I can issue the command and see a report of success, but on reboot I just get the old recovery mode.

So... I guess I do have a compelling reason to upgrade, although the N5 was satisfactory in every other way. My Nexus 4 still works fine, but it's gotten much puffier than it should be, and apparently it's impossible to get a new battery for it.

:(

That's a pretty crappy excuse, I've had laptops that last for 7 years just fine running Linux.

This is disappointing to me too. The 5X seems just a tad too large on top of me not needing it as my 5 is still going strong after ~3 years..

Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that this made it into the final version of N. I can't find it anywhere in the settings anyway.

I don't think the blue light filter made it into the final release

As in it's available without root? Because this has been available with root since KitKat, and there were also some apps which allowed you to use it...

I didn't know about this and now I am really interested in the update. I've been using one of the overlay ones for a while and it is kind of annoying.

I can't find it, I searched settings for 'blue, 'bed' & 'night'.

This is the most significant update, way way overdue.

Apple went with option 1 for split screen and picture-in-picture video support on iOS, and a year later many major apps still don't support those features. Option 2 is definitely the way to go.

Along your point, it's pretty easy to reverse the logic on the last sentence and still have it be a sane argument:

> This feature should be turned on for all apps; you shouldn't make every user wait for every app ever made to be updated because three people on the Android developer team made a new feature and were too afraid to break things, so they turn it off by default for legacy (pre-Nougat targeted) apps.

EDIT: I should read the whole thread before posting. GrinningFool made the same argument:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12338639

If I recall, it also displays a simple toast for apps that do not target the API, saying "App may not work with split screen"

This also lets the user know it's not the Apps fault. I feel it's a pretty good way to enhance the experience where possible and move apps forward even if they're old.

Multi-windowed mode can be found hiding in the options (which can only be edited with root) in 6.0.1, and it works well enough right now with just a few graphical bugs on very few apps. I'm guessing you're right, and if it does break the app then all the user has to do is turn off multi-windowed mode.

> a sampling of a significant number of apps showed that they rendered fine

The problem is they break the API all the time, and this leaves Google Play strewn with broken apps. This may break 1% of apps, the next release breaks another 1%, after 10 releases, 10% of the apps not updated are broken.

Here's an example, I go to Google Play and search for "ringtone maker" ( https://play.google.com/store/search?q=ringtone%20maker ). The #3 result for me (which can vary by location) is https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.anbu.ringt... . So I download the app, click the microphone, say something, hit stop and - "java.io.IOException: Unknown file format".

This is their 3rd result for ringtone maker, has over 5 million downloads and yet their record feature is broken. It used to work but Google changed the API. You can look at the app source code ( https://github.com/malizadehq/ringdroid ) to see where this app broke if you want. This is just one example which comes to mind, I can think of many.

They claim they don't break the API going forward but they do all the time.

Yeah if people have followed the UI guidelines for Android that has existed since day one, their app will have the required resources for Android to resize and reshape it to fit whatever screen shape the split view will create.

Signal has a Google Play Services dependency for notifications, so it won't work properly without installing the whole Google package.

Open Whisper Systems (the developers of Signal) apparently don't want to replace it or even just build in a fallback [0], and even fought with the LibreSignal developers, which is a fork that removes this dependency, and told them to stop using their servers [1], which lead to LibreSignal being discontinued.

I don't know what the heck is going on with this, but yeah, it's not pretty.

[0]: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/issues/1106

[1]: https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...

There's also a more elaborate article on the topic here:

https://lwn.net/Articles/687294/

Re: APKMirror: I have the same questions I have about all APK proxy services - which claim to pull the APKs directly form the Play Store - why would I trust it to provide software that isn't infected with malware?

Other than APK Downloader, I haven't found another credible source among the very many options. Any solutions would be appreciated.

----

[0] APK Downloader, for those interested ... I'd start with the original, but the others might suit your needs:

* redphoenix89's original here: http://codekiem.com/2014/08/07/official-apk-downloader-v2-do... and here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1515021

* Bexton's updated Chrome extension, based on v1.21: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1809458

* Lekensteyn updated Chrome extension, based on v1.3.4 of Bexton's: https://lekensteyn.nl/apk-downloader/ and https://github.com/Lekensteyn/apk-downloader

It needs Google Play Services for push notifications over GCM.

Nexus 5 has a Snapdragon 800 with no 64-bit support. So, it's out. Same with the 805 in my Nexus 6. They're both kinda long in the tooth. The project supports the current (soon to be previous) generation of Nexus devices: 5x, 6p, 9.

Nope, Marshmallow [0]. 0-day 3rd-party Android ROMs aren't really a thing, since AOSP code isnt publicly updated until final release (unless that changed this cycle, but I haven't heard of it).

[0] https://copperhead.co/android/downloads?device=bullhead

> As a techie you have to know by now that if you want an up to date version of Android you ought to get a Nexus

Not true. I have bought: Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 7, Nexus 10, Nexus 5. Two of those were as expensive as iOS devices. None of them can get the N update (yes I could use Cyanogenmod but I prefer production versions of software for testing). We have our own app for Android phones and it is a pain to test (simulating touch with a mouse is not good). Other Android devices purchased for testing are no better...

Meanwhile the work iPhone 4 made it to iOS 7, the iPad 2 made it as far as iOS 9, and our other test devices are still getting updates to iOS 10.

I feel that Nexus devices stop getting updates quickly. The non-nexus Androids are way worse.

Don't buy an Android if you want a device to stay secure more than say two years (coming from somebody who loves Android!).

Thanks for the stats!

> As a techie you have to know by now that if you want an up to date version of Android you ought to get a Nexus...

Except I did that and it looks like my Nexus 7 is no longer getting OS updates, while my older iPhone 5 is still chugging on the latest OS and afaik will get iOS 10 soon.

This will definitely dissuade me from buying Android in the future.

We decided to build our own dashboard since Google's is updated only about once a month. It also doesn't include data from non Google Play devices:

https://data.apteligent.com/android/

I wish I didn't update my Nexus 7 2012 to Lollipop. Lollipop made it crawl compared to Kitkat.

A lot of love went into player for N. It's in better shape than in M.

However beware of following the advice given...

If a higher percentage of Samsung devices are updated (graph keeps going up), then that would imply you were more likely to get an update.

The graph currently emphasises the first mover speed (which is affected by carriers, not just manufacturers).

That's the first phone to ship with it, but I think phones like the LG G5 and S7 could see it earlier than that.

That's from the date of initial introduction. The relevant number is 18 months from the date you bought it.

This just worked for me.

Warning : make sure you are actually on Android 7 before unenrolling. Going out of a regular beta will wipe your phone.