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Android Lollipop rollout delayed due to battery drain bug

Android fans will have to wait another week to get their hands on Android 5.0 as Google fixes a bug that was causing severe battery drain.
Written by Liam Tung, Contributing Writer

In news that will come as a mixed blessing for Android fans, the rollout of Lollipop has been put on hold due to bugs that were causing severe battery drain.

If you were wondering why your Nexus or Google Play Edition phone hadn't received an over the air (OTA) update delivering Android 5.0, the answer appears to be that Google is ironing out some serious bugs that would have made it unwelcome in the first place.

The good news is that the issues are now fixed. The bad news for Android users is that Google has pushed the Lollipop rollout back as a consequence, from its originally scheduled date of November 3 to November 12.

News of the delay arrived yesterday via Artem Russakovskii, founder of Android Police. According to Russakovskii, the first OTA updates were moved to November 12 due to "some outstanding bugs".

Google hasn't provided a statement on the new rollout schedule or the source of the delays. However an Android engineer did publicly acknowledge "significant" battery drain when wi-fi is enabled on a Lollipop device.

"Android Engineering is aware of an issue affecting Nexus 5 users running Android 5.0 which causes significant 'Miscellaneous' battery usage while wi-fi is enabled. This appears to be caused by an abnormally high number of IRQ wakeup events," Trevor Johns, a Google engineer for the Android Open Source Project, wrote yesterday.

As Android Police pointed out, Johns has later confirmed the issue has been fixed in the latest build. 

Arguably the last thing Google would want is to annoy its millions of users with a battery drain issue, given that one of the headline features of Lollipop is a new battery saving feature that extends the life of a device by up to 90 minutes. The OS version also boasts new power management features which estimate the time left before the device requires a recharge.

Other key features Android users can expect when Lollipop does arrive include lock screen notifications, a host of new quick setting functions such as flashlight and cast screen controls, and better accessibility features for the vision impaired.

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