Android Lollipop rolls out

Designing the perfect Lollipop? Strawberry and sherbert, and it should be the size of my face, please.

But no, Google’s latest post on its Official Android Blog is less about sweets-on-sticks and more about Android Lollipop, the latest version of its smartphone and tablet software.

It started rolling out to devices this week, and colleague Sam Gibbs has already put the new software through its paces with a five-star review:

Lollipop is a complete visual overhaul of the standard Android look, making it a much smoother, more coherent and connected experience – a big step up compared to previous iterations of Google’s software.

It is also faster, lighter on battery and adds a lot of what third-party manufacturers have had to manually bolt on to their customised versions of Android.

Google’s blog post focuses on the design aspects of Lollipop, particularly the way its “material design” aims to be “one consistent design language flexible enough to span devices across mobile, desktop, and beyond”.

Is the company onto something? If you’re using Lollipop already on one or more devices, how are you finding it, and do you think material design will deliver on Google’s promises?

What new features are looking most useful, and what would you like to see added in future updates? How do you think Android Lollipop stacks up compared to Apple’s iOS 8? The comments are open for your views.

What else is on the technology radar today? A few links to chew over:

• Social service Ask.fm, which has faced scrutiny over cyberbullying, is appointing a law enforcement affairs officer and providing more information on how to block and report users and ‘problematic’ content.
• Christies is preparing to auction off the “only known surviving Apple-1 documented to have been sold directly by Steve Jobs to an individual from his parents’ garage”. Although you may need up to $600,000 to nab it.
• US startup Paracosm certainly sounds ambitious: it’s raised $3.3m of funding to, in CEO Amir Rubin’s words, “take the digital world beyond screens and enable machines to understand the world as we do, turning your living room into a holodeck”.
• Veteran technology site CNET is launching... a print magazine? Yep. A print magazine. It’ll be quarterly with an initial print run of 200,000 copies and exclusive articles. “We’re trying to make a statement that we’re investing in print because we think it’s a viable way to reach this audience...”
• Finally, a snapshot of mobile gaming in 2014, as King reveals that the soundtrack for its soon-to-launch Candy Crush Soda Saga will be performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. No news on whether the musicians stopped playing halfway through and demanded that King pay more money, etc etc.
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