14 DAY TRIAL // After delaying the Nexus 6 and Android 5.0 Lollipop releases without making any announcements, Google seems to have sorted out the reasons for these delays.
Google’s Trevor Johns, senior developer programs engineer for Android, confirmed recently that his company was aware of an issue that’s been affecting the Nexus 5 smartphones with Android 5.0 Lollipop.
Keep in mind that the final version of Android 5.0 Lollipop has yet to be pushed to Nexus 5 devices, but a select few included in the testing program have already got it, which is why Google has been able to find the issue in the first place.
According to Johns, “Android Engineering is aware of an issue affecting Nexus 5 users running Android 5.0 which causes significant ‘Miscellaneous’ battery usage while WiFi is enabled. This appears to be caused by an abnormally high number of IRQ wakeup events. We are continuing to investigate this issue.”
The good news is that Google was fast on patching the battery draining issue, and if this was the only thing preventing the company from releasing the Android 5.0 Lollipop factory images for Nexus 4 and 5, then we should expect them to be published very soon.
The information regarding the patching of the bug has been confirmed by Trevor Johns, who says that the issue is fixed in the latest builds.
The Nexus 6 is expected to hit shelves as early as November 12
Previous rumors claim that Google will start pushing the Android 5.0 Lollipop update to Nexus 5 and possibly Nexus 4 beginning November 12. This date coincides with the Nexus 6 release, which has been slightly delayed in order to fix the critical issue mentioned earlier.
This isn’t the first time Nexus 5 owners complain about battery issues. Ironically, a previous version of Android introduced a battery draining bug that’s related to the camera.
One of the processes needed for the main camera on the Nexus 5 to function properly remains active in the memory even after closing the application. This apparently leads to a fast depletion of the battery.
Google has since confirmed that this issue will be fixed in the next version of Android, but until Nexus 5 owners receive the update the only way to avoid it is to stop using the camera.
If no other major bugs need to be fixed, we expect Google to publish the Android 5.0 Lollipop factory images for Nexus 5 and 4 in the next couple of days. Stay tuned for more updates on the matter.