The March security update OTA for the Nexus 5X and 6P has been released by Google while the Nexus 6 will be seeing the update as soon as next week. The news came via the Project Fi User Forums where moderator Orrin who outlined the timeline for the update hitting devices. If you are a Nexus 5X or 6P user, regardless if you are on Project Fi or not, you should see the update very soon.
The evolution of Google+ marches on and thanks to Google’s Luke Wroblewski, the details of the update to the Android app for the social & community site are now available. The update has already started rolling to the Google Play Store so if you haven’t received the update yet, you will over the next few days. The updated version you are looking for is 7.4.0 and it will be available for both Android phones and tablets.
On the heels of the first technical preview being released yesterday, Google has published the official Support and Release Notes for Android N. The lengthy page outlines known issues with the release as well as performance issues that users may encounter with this first release of the next generation of Android. As I put in the announcement of the preview yesterday, this release is not for the faint of heart and certainly not ready for your primary phone or tablet. It has a lot of issues that you would expect at this very early stage and this document outlines a lot of them.
Google has now turned the wick up on the Android N Beta Program site, allowing you to register your device and download the next generation of Android to your eligible device. The program is designed for developers to download the technical previews as they are released via an OTA update instead of having to reflash your device each time, a huge time saver to say the least.
Google has launched a new destinations search results feature in Google Search that will make finding your next holiday destination a bit easier. The new feature brings a wealth of information to your fingertips just by adding the word “destination” to your search. For example, you can search Destination Thailand and you will get a listing of all of the popular travel destinations in that country along with average flight costs and hotel costs in a tile-style results page.
The Chromium team over at Google has released a small but important update to the Chrome browser for PC, Mac and Linux today that users will want to make sure they have installed. The updated build is version 49.0.2623.87 for those keeping score at home and while it doesn’t bring any new features, it does close a few security holes that were in the first Chrome 49 build released last week.
Google has released the latest Android distribution numbers and it is good news for Android Marshmallow. The latest report was posted yesterday and the most current version of Android saw a 109% increase in its install base over February 2016. While the overall percentage compared to all Android version is small, only 2.3%, the jump is reflective of the significant number of devices that have seen Marshmallow come to them over the course of the last month.
As part of their monthly security update plan, Google has released the March 2016 security update for both Android Lollipop and Android Marshmallow today. Both updates have had their factory images posted on the Android developer site while the OTA updates are also shipping today for Nexus devices. Users can expect to see the update hit their unlocked Nexus devices over the course of the next few days and maybe up to a week as it rolls out.