14 DAY TRIAL // The Nexus 9 and the Nexus 6 are the first devices to arrive in the wild with Android 5.0 Lollipop, but owners of older devices such as the Nexus 7 (2013 & 2012) and Nexus 10 were given hope that they too would be granted a taste of the new Android build.
Originally, we were expecting Google to start rolling out Android 5.0 for the tablets starting November 3, but when the date came and nothing happened, it became apparent that the search giant was postponing the launch for a later date.
Android 5.0 Lollipop for the tablets is expected soon
This proved to be November 12, as Google was said to have stumbled upon some bugs that needed to be fixed before the official roll-out.
As we wait for Google to make things official, the first factory image for one Nexus device has been leaked online. The Lollipop factory image is for the Nexus 7 (2012) Wi-Fi version and was spotted by a tipster on the Google servers itself (as seen at Android Police).
The factory image contains the LRX21P build, which is similar to the LRX21L and LRX21M builds found on the recent Nexus 9 and Nexus Player. This version seems to be in near final state, but until the official release comes from Google itself, we can’t really be sure of anything.
The leaked factory image might not be the final version
So if you have a Nexus 7 (2012) lying around and you’re the adventurous type, you can go ahead and download the factory image (mirror) right now and try it out on your Nexus slate.
However, take into consideration that you might encounter some issues. For starters it seems there’s a problem with the bootloader image in the file, which is said to be one year old.
When flashing, users may encounter a signature mismatch. Even so, this aspect shouldn't be an impediment in your quest towards Lollipop, because the version included here is 4.23, which is a year old.
So given that you’re working with a Nexus 7 (2012), you most likely have the bootloader on your device already. If you stumble upon problems in fastboot, all you have to do is skip it and flash system.img and boot.img.
If you’re not sure you will manage to get this done correctly, we advise you to wait for the official factory images as they will be released by Google soon.
NVIDIA also announced it would be bringing Android 5.0 Lollipop to its Shield Tablet and maybe, just maybe, to its Tegra Note 7 slate too this November. So watch out for that.
