
Android Nougat 7.1.2 Beta is out now for Pixel and Nexus 5X - rahulchowdhury
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/01/get-sneak-peek-at-android-nougat-712.html
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fridek
I couldn't care less with Android's fragmentation getting worse, not better.
See
[https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html](https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html)
\- less than 1% is on 7.0+ a year after its announcement.

My Nexus 5 (2013), fully under control of Google, didn't get even 7.0 (2016).
Moto G4 (2016) I bought few months ago is on 6.0 (2015), might get 7.0 (2016)
soon-ish. I basically stopped caring about new versions, buying new phones to
get the latest, etc. They are not even as exciting as they used to be,
feature-wise.

edited: Nexus 5 actually got 6.0

~~~
foepys
This isn't entirely Google's fault. A lot of smartphones use Qualcomm's
baseband chips which require kernel drivers. But Qualcomm refuses to port
their driver over to newer kernel and so every device is stuck with a specific
kernel version for its lifetime. So you might have Android 7.1 but the kernel
is still 3.10 even though the actual kernel in Android 7.1 should be 4.4. This
is often (not always) because Qualcomm's driver is only compatible with 3.10
and Qualcomm wants to be paid a lot of money to change this.

~~~
regularfry
Live by the sword, die by the sword. (Users shouldn't have to care that Google
made a design decision which puts control over their platform in the hands of
a third party like this, in other words)

~~~
bryanlarsen
Qualcomm used illegal monopolistic practices to establish their dominant
position. They're being fined and sued for billions for it but in the meantime
the damage is done, we are all suffering.

~~~
sgift
> Qualcomm used illegal monopolistic practices to establish their dominant
> position

Allegedly. Or did I miss a ruling?

~~~
bryanlarsen
Final rulings have come down in China and South Korea. Other jurisdictions
with active investigations include Europe, Taiwan and the US.

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mulrian
Release notes don't really say a whole lot:

[https://developer.android.com/preview/support-712.html](https://developer.android.com/preview/support-712.html)

Anyone know what has actually changed?

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josteink
> Anyone know what has actually changed?

This is annoying with Google and Android. The betas are completely closed-
source, so digging around in the actual Android-repos won't give you any leads
either.

I didn't dig too deep, but latest tag I could find in the currently published
repos is "android-7.1.1_r13".

[https://android.googlesource.com/platform/bionic/+/android-7...](https://android.googlesource.com/platform/bionic/+/android-7.1.1_r13)

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bb101
Last time I joined the Android Beta Program (for 7.1.1), Google removed the
the Night mode feature. No thanks, I'm done with early releases removing
features that were otherwise working well in previous versions.

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dajohnson89
What an infuriating post -- it doesn't link to the changelog.

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patrickaljord
Still no Pixel in France and most of the world though. I guess I'll go for an
iphone then. Too bad, that Pixel looked good.

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Maarten88
I must say, since getting 7.0 on my 5X, battery life has improved a lot. It
could barely make a full workday on 6.0, but now it will last almost two days
of average use.

I wouldn't even think of installing this beta, they don't give me any reason
to. Maybe if they would fix the contact syncing with non-Google providers, or
something.

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e40
_Maybe if they would fix the contact syncing with non-Google providers, or
something._

I have found serious bugs with syncing contacts to Google's servers. I found
that the web version of contacts didn't have a bunch of changes I made to a
contact on my phone, so now every time I make changes on my phone I look and
rarely are they on the web contacts.

I started a case with Google (I have a 5x, so I'm supported) and go to the
point they wanted me to factory reset rather than find the bug. I said no
thanks. I even pleaded that that would just mask the bug and didn't they want
to find the problem? After all, I was completely stock (I didn't even unlock
the bootloader).

~~~
Maarten88
I didn't know it was that broken. I always assumed my Android Contact problems
came from using Office 365 Exchange with Outlook as the main source of my
contact list, with many years of history in it.

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jjmiv
i'm hoping the wait for the Nexus 6P beta here is due to fixing the
"connections with car bluetooth" issue :(

~~~
wccrawford
Good lord, yes. That has been horrible. Mine was working fine before 7.1.1,
but broke at that point. Apparently others have been having it since long
before that, too.

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bostand
People blaming carries and manufacturers for late updates:

Is there any other product where the manufacturer must redo half of the
product at the whim of a third party?

Google needs to work with these companies, not as it is today throw a pile of
random changes on them every six months. Most of all, there needs to be a
grand plan and an understanding about what will be changed next (and why).

~~~
sgift
Maybe. On the other hand if the manufacturers changed less when they "apply"
Android to their phones updates would be easier, but instead of providing a
default Android every manufacturer tries to be the "best" Android variant
(sometimes with more success, sometimes with less success) and then they say
"hey, we've sold it already, updates? Nope. No interest."

~~~
bostand
This is simply not true. The amount of time updating "skins" add to the
development is relatively small. Haven't you noticed that even companies with
almost stock android are having trouble keeping up with these updates?

Because most of their time is spent on the numerous low level changes for the
new kernel (and how it behaves towards the firmware and completely messes up
power management) and getting it past national authorities and carriers.

Source: a friend of mine does this for living

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mkoryak
does this work with a verizon pixel? It let me enroll mine, but no update
yet...

