A new version of Android seems to be on the horizon in the very near future, folks. Google’s own Android One site for Indonesia has been updated to suggest that the affordable smartphones will ship with the “latest” version of Android 5.1. As far as we know that version doesn’t yet exist in any official capacity, so either this was a mistake (there are multiple instances of “Android 5.1″ mentioned on the webpage) or Google is preparing to make an announcement soon.
Sightings of Android 5.1 on a variety of Nexus devices have been hitting Phandroid’s servers for a few weeks now, but we weren’t sure if they were spoofed (you can easily edit a file or two on your phone to make it appear as something it’s not) or if Googlers were actually testing out some new digs. Android Police also seems to have secured an Android One phone that does, indeed, ship with Android 5.1 loaded up:
It’s quite odd to see Google opting to jump to 5.1 from 5.0.2 with what appears to be a long list of issues still needing to be addressed (if you can get through all the troublesome spam at their issue tracker you’ll see what we mean).
Perhaps Google stuffed so many fixes into this version that it deserved such a big jump. Perhaps there are some cool new features to dig into, as well (such as proper support for WiFi calling that’s said to be on the way for carriers like T-Mobile through a forthcoming update).
For now, though, there isn’t much to know about it, and we’re hoping that will change at some point later today or later this week.
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