Android 5.0.1 Airs, Looks to Squash Numerous Lollipop Bugs

Google Inc.’s (GOOG) Android 5.0 Lollipop saw a soft launch in mid-October and hit official AOSP (Android Open Source Project) status roughly two and a half weeks later, on Nov. 3.  It’s been roughly a month since that rollout and it’s been a rather painfully slow rollout process, with Lollipop accounting for less than 0.1 percent of Android devices at present.

Among the lucky few receiving quicker updates included select Motorola handsets (a subsidiary of the Lenovo Group Ltd. (HKG:0992)) and select Nexus devices (various OEMs).  The downside for those early adopters and the upside, of sorts, for those who don’t have access to Lollipop yet is that by the time Lollipop does get to you, it may be less buggy.

Google announced today the availability of Android 5.0.1 AOSP, the first major ROM upgrade patch for Lollipop.

Among the issues it looks to fix:

• Poor battery life (seen on the Nexus 5)
• Storage issues (seen on the Nexus 6)
• Overheating (seen on the Nexus 9)

The Android 5.0.1 AOSP release carries the build number LRX22C.  You can get images direct from Google for the following devices:

• Nexus 7 (2013)
• Nexus 9
• Nexus 10

It should be interesting to see if this patch fixes Lollipop’s assorted early bugs, which appeared rather prevalent in the small population, forcing some users to roll back to Android 4.4 KitKat.