Google’s next version of Android — 7.0, also known as Nougat — could arrive as early as this week, according to a consistently reliable source of mobile tech industry leaks. The final developer preview of the updated mobile operating system, which will succeed last year’s Marshmallow, was released July 18.
“Android 7.0 releases next month, with the 8/5 security patch,” VentureBeat reporter Evan Blass wrote Saturday on his “evleaks” Twitter account. “Sorry Nexus 5 owners, no Nougat for you.”
Rather than one of Google’s own Nexus phones, the first device to ship with Android Nougat will be LG’s V20. The South Korean-based electronics giant announced today that its new flagship smartphone, set to hit the market in the third quarter of this year, will come preloaded with Nougat.
Support for Multi-Window, ‘Light’ Doze
If it arrives on Friday as Blass predicted, Android Nougat is expected to deliver a number of new visible and not-so-visible improvements. With this latest update, Google engineers said they focused on three key issues: performance, security and productivity.
“I’m pretty excited about a bunch of the under the hood improvements we’ve made: JIT, OTA speed, and some big kernel scheduler changes,” engineer Anwar Ghuloum said during a first-ever Android team “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) session on Reddit last month. “It’s something no user will see, but hopefully they’ll notice:).”
Among the more noticeable changes expected to arrive with Nougat are multi-window support, a “Seamless Updates” feature and a “light” update for the battery-saving Doze mode.
“The new Doze work in N is looking like it will be a big win for batteries everywhere — early data from testers looks good, and that gets me excited,” engineer Paul Eastham said during the Reddit AMA.
As Blass suggested in his tweet, Android Nougat will be supported on Google’s most recent devices, including the Nexus 6 and 5X, but not on the nearly three-year-old Nexus 5, which helped launch Android 4.4 KitKat.
LG V20 ‘Tuned for Nougat’
LG’s V20 will be the first new smartphone to arrive with Nougat built in. LG has worked closely with Google since it launched its first Android phone in 2009. The companies have also collaborated on several Nexus devices, including 2015’s Nexus 5X.
“The LG V20 builds upon the premium and rich multimedia smartphone experience of last year’s LG V10,” the company said today in a statement. “It will be tuned to take advantage of many of the best features of Nougat, including Vulkan-supported graphics for more immersive gaming while also delivering better battery performance with Doze.”
Marshmallow, the latest version of Android that’s available on consumer devices, came out last October. According to recent data from Google, Android KitKat, which came out in late 2013, remains the most widely used version of the operating system, with just over 30 percent of the global market share.
