Complaints surface, though.
By Dileep Thekkethil
BENGALURFU: Indian Smartphone manufacturer Celkon announced the launch of the company’s first Android One smartphone based on Android Lollipop 5.0 out-of-the-box in January.
“Our Android One smartphone will come preloaded in Android Lollipop and will have the same specification and pricing as the other smartphones which are a part of Android One program,” said Murali Retineni, the executive director of Celkon Mobiles.
Earlier, in September, Indian smartphone manufacturers such as Micromax, Karbonn and Spice had launched Android One smartphones after Google officially launched the Android One initiative in India.
Vendors of Android One smartphones follow the strict guidelines of Google when it comes to hardware specification and in return Google offer these devices with regular OS update, directly from its warehouse.
The Google approved specification of Android One smartphone is 480×853 pixel touchscreen, 1.3 GHz MediaTek quad-core processor, mail-400MP graphics, 1GB Ram, 4 GB internal storage capacity and an expandable slot.
The smartphone must also have a 5 MP primary camera and a 2 MP front camera. All Android One smartphones have 1700 mAh battery.
Google has not yet officially announced the Lollipop update for Android One smartphones, but Spice announced the update for Android One smartphone Dream Uno by the end of January. The Lollipop update will be available in Android One via OTA and it will be identical in all devices; without any customization from the vendor.
As of now only Google’s Nexus devices, Moto X and Moto G have received the Lollipop update.
Some users who updated their Nexus device to Android Lollipop have complained about their device running slow and frequent crash. Also, the preinstalled apps built with Adobe Air are reportedly getting uninstalled automatically and the OS prevents users from reinstalling them.
Gary Looker one of the early few to upgrade to Android Lollipop said to BBC that, “Updated and the Nexus is [so] shockingly bad it is basically unusable, lags just rotating the screen, every task takes 10 seconds to perform if it does it [at all].”
There are also reports about WiFi connectivity issues, problems while texting, missing contact etc.
Hopefully, by the time Google release the Lollipop update for Android One device, they should find fixes for all these bugs.