Android L build for Samsung Galaxy S5 gets previewed

Android L

By all accounts, Android L's release is coming soon, perhaps even this month (or in November). We've known for months what Google wants its next mobile OS version to look like, since the company's already presented its new Material Design. But what about the different phone makers? They've so far gotten used to modifying the looks of stock Android quite a lot, so it's interesting to see how they'll approach this version.

And now we can get a look at what Samsung's interpretation of Android L will look like, as someone got their hands on a pre-release build of the new OS for the Galaxy S5. This build is said to be very slow and buggy, so there's clearly a lot of work that Samsung still has to do (and this is the reason why it hasn't been made available for download).

   
Android L for Samsung Galaxy S5 screenshots

If you were hoping that Samsung would give up on its TouchWiz UI overlay entirely, well, you were wrong. Samsung's Android L doesn't look like Google's Android L - not entirely. There are many similarities, though, and it's nice to see Samsung finally change some design bits that have been left pretty much unaltered for years.

Take for example the Settings menu. This is now white, and not blue. On the other hand, the quick settings in the notification shade look very similar to those in Samsung's KitKat release for the Galaxy S5.

   
More screenshots showing Android L on the Galaxy S5

The good thing is that Samsung's built-in apps (such as Dialer, Memo, Clock, and so on) have been redesigned according to Material Design guidelines (though they aren't finished yet, as they have no animations at this point).

The new lock screen from Google's Android L makes an appearance in Samsung's vision, but sadly the amount of notifications it can show is only two (compared to four in the stock OS).

To get a better idea about what you can expect from Samsung's Android L update for the Galaxy S5, watch the video below.

It's great to see Samsung already working on bringing the next version of Android to its flagship device. This should hopefully mean that there won't be a huge waiting period from when Google releases Android L to when the S5 will receive this update. In fact we have previously heard that it would roll out by early December.

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Android L will have built-in encryption, just like iOS

The next major version of Android is going to come with one feature that will please the security-conscious: built-in encryption. It means anyone who grabs hold of your mobile device—from petty thief to law enforcement officer—will find it much more difficult to extract data from it. The same level of advanced encryption is also available in iOS 8. 

Android users have had the option to encrypt their phones and tablets since 2011, but the setup process for Android L will switch it on by default. iOS has always encrypted data on devices automatically — there’s no option to enable it as there is on current versions of Android — but the protection has been reworked and improved in iOS 8.

Related: Android L — the future of Android is (almost) here

“For over three years Android has offered encryption, and keys are not stored off of the device, so they cannot be shared with law enforcement,” Google spokeswoman Niki Christoff told the Washington Post. “As part of our next Android release, encryption will be enabled by default out of the box, so you won’t even have to think about turning it on.”

It’s a feature that is particularly noteworthy in a post-Snowden climate. The NSA-engineer-turned-whistleblower has been calling for improved encryption methods to prevent governments and other agencies from spying on user data, and the extra security layer arriving with Android L are another step in this direction.

“Most people aren’t going to go out of their way to do these things,” said Joseph Lorenzo Hall, chief technologist of a Washington non-profit, when speaking to the Post. “It’s so awesome, as someone who has worked on these issues for a long time, to see these two companies switch their defaults to where these things will be strongly encrypted, and rightly so.”

As for Android L, we still don’t know exactly when it will appear or even what it’s going to be called when it’s released. With flagship devices such as the Nexus 9 rumored to be launching in October, we shouldn’t have too much longer to wait to find out.