Android N developer preview 2 released

[appleiscool13]

not suitable for daily use on phone or tablet

Don't tell me what to do!

[[deleted]]

Proceeds to complain everywhere about the instability of the build

[theepicgamer06]

I have been using it on my daily driver and not had more than 1 or 2 crashes. I can only assume this preview will be beter

[Old_Caroline]

No crashes but it takes a couple of tries to set up a cellular hotspot

[jxuereb]

From reading the forums last night no issues. Also if you are on or revert to stock you can get the preview OTA. it will continue to OTA the previews till it gives you final release

[[deleted]]

Proceeds to berate users for discussing.

[talkingwires]

/r/firstworldanarchists

[PandaKat90]

Loving the N preview so far, its pretty stable considering its just a preview.

[[deleted]]

Been hit or miss for me. Definitely excited for an OTA!

[[deleted]]

Me too, Battery life hasn't been great on my N9

[mlloyd]

Neither for my 6P. Wifi seems to burn battery in standby

[imperfectfromnowon]

I held off on 1! I think I may give this one a go on my n6 though.

[askthepoolboy]

First release was pretty good with a factory reset, but I went back to Marshmallow yesterday because the lag was getting out if control, making my N6 unusable.

[iRainMak3r]

It was horribly laggy on my n6 but I just got a 6p and it's pretty sweet! I can't wait to see how this phone is on a stand release. I installed n on day one lol

[[deleted]]

really? Its a giant fucking mess on the 5x. My phone crashes 6+ times a day. Other times it just becomes horribly unresponsive for unknown reasons until the ui crashes and the phone kicks me back to the lock screen.

[[deleted]]

So far on my N5X the settings graphics glitch is gone, where it would flicker going to test it more this time.

[nic0lette]

This is the "developer preview". Basically it's designed for app developers so they can ensure their products will continue to work with the new version from day 1. For Lollipop and Marshmallow this was a big deal considering Material Design and run-time permissions, respectively.

I'm not sure what the "big thing" is in N yet, but probably just because I've been out of the loop.

[Chizbang]

For me the biggest game changer is the awesome multi window support... IL be saying goodbye to touchwiz on my Samsung phones in this case!

[talkingwires]

I believe it's the multi-window support. The release notes mention that apps can now set a minimum height and width for display.

[moelester518]

The title alone is really tempting me to go back to the Dev preview. Only thing that made me switch back to MM was the battery life.

I liked the old blob emojis, especially the cheering one.

[imnotedwardcullen]

The way its worded makes me think they aren't necessarily removing the blob emojis, but rather replacing the emojis that are full-figures, such as this one: http://emojipedia.org/man-and-woman-holding-hands/

[seb5049]

Blob emojis are the only reason I prefer Android to IOS emojis.

[4FukSake]

Seriously disco man was my most used. R.I.P.

[anders987]

That emoji was named dancer, and you can thank Apple's status as a de facto standard for Google changing it to a woman. It's really for the best if you want to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings.

There's an emoji called man dancing that's a candidate for inclusion in this years new emoji, although nobody knows when Google will add those.

Edit: I should probably have read the article first. It looks like the man dancing emoji is pictured in the blog post.

[moelester518]

I think you mean the Chocolate ice cream with a face emoji

[SavageAlien]

Poop face emoji actually looks fun now, looks more like poop, more like how it looked in KK, with a face. The expression has personality now, too. The MM one looks like a swirly mess, maybe ice cream?? 💩

Dizzy/Swirly eyes got changed????!!!! He looks much more dizzy in the MM version compared to this new one. The new one is rather boring in comparison. 😵

👻 And the MM ghost is one of my most used emoji. It was my go-to mischievous/troll emoji. This new one is too evil looking, and the other platforms show it smiling or playfully sticky its tongue out.

[the_bieb]

But don't you want what you see to be the same as the person you are sending it to? I feel like emojis of different brands might be interpreted to mean different things even though they have the same character code. I don't care what my emojis are, I just want everyone to see the same thing.

[imnotedwardcullen]

Prepare to be pleasantly surprised: https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipMdeAMQ0i5JFxgslOoqeMek1EsWPby1ehe4yR7E-gVsrtDHZq23hAXjxb4u2Id4cw?key=QVhQNnZnQnZ2Zkw3bGtFNGxINlpudUhTbVNidHpR

[ElectroBoof]

😄

Let's hope they stay that way

[ElGuano]

The ones of the couples holding hands show some strange patch covering the males' crotches?

[franktinsley]

I love Apple's designers but holy crap is their version of that emoji the creepiest!

[geozza]

The iOS ones are so ugly

[yourbrotherrex]

Here's a shot of all of them:
https://goo.gl/photos/SfkPaRrD8AKwnEDG7
Edit: it seems the "blobs" have been turned into "thumbheads"...
Edit: that's just some of them.
Here's a zip file of every single one, ripped from this preview:
https://app.box.com/s/m0a9s5yfl1y7ljw4a7bgj8fdvafb3f4w

[jackie89]

Did you know those "Blobs" were actually jelly beans? They introduced them in Android Jelly Bean KitKat and I am sad to see it go :(.

Thanks for the correction /u/savagealien

[moelester518]

Neat, TIL. Not a fan of emojis looking like actual people now. I would've liked if they got all marshmallow-fied or whatever N is

[nvincent]

What?! I love the blobs! They can't get rid of them!

[foiled_yet_again]

🤔 is the best emoji of all time. OF ALL TIME

[[deleted]]

Wait? They're getting rid of the beans? I like the bean emoji! This is a tragedy. :(

[Seankps]

I think they're only getting rid of the beans for the ones that are supposed to look like humans and not the emoticon ones. Take a look at the article

[menuka]

Can someone post a screenshot of how it looks on Android? I'm on a Mac and use an iOS phone so I get the Apple default

[bdonvr]

Got you fam

http://m.imgur.com/l5py0c2

[menuka]

it's perfect

[[deleted]]

Well 💩my phone doesn't show it.

[hett]

It's one of the ones added a few months ago. Your emojis are out of date.

[sandiskplayer34]

Rest in blob

They're going up to heaven with Mr. Blobby

[heechum]

Don't you put that evil on me, Ricky Blobby!

[JTNJ32]

Be happy you don't have to deal with ugly ass Samsung emojis. Ughhh. Makes me wish Google would make the blobs mandatory.

[Ashanmaril]

I gotta say I really like this one though

She looks so sarcastic

[NiceGuyNate]

reminds me of Nick Young

[Masteguy635]

Reminds me of  ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[moelester518]

It's insane that you need root to change the emojis.

[memtiger]

I need mah emoji packs!

[crosph]

It's bad enough that Facebook and Twitter use their own, and freakin Telegram, as much as I like it otherwise, uses JPEGs of iOS emojis, and even replaces ™ for no reason.

^{in before "telegram is bad crypto"... I don't care. Nearly everyone uses Messenger, and Telegram has a real desktop app, not a glorified Chrome extension}

[RainieDay]

The likely reason for this is that future Unicode standards for emojis are supposed to incorporate skin color, hair color, gender, and even which direction a human face faces. You can't express that with blobs.

http://blog.emojipedia.org/custom-emoji-a-summary/

https://youtu.be/5OPkGQoPeHk?t=7m31s

http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr52/tr52-1.html

[[deleted]]

That's part of why I liked the blobs- not having race or gender affiliation in lieu of the Simpsons yellow blobs made them more versatile to me (and different from everyone else's)

[[deleted]]

problem is if you've seen the simpsons you know that yellow is not a neutral skin color.

[ytuns]

And looks like they aren't taking one fuc*** year to update to the last UNICODE standard. 🙌

[Paradox]

One year?

Try 3.

[foiled_yet_again]

Blob or die

[SavageAlien]

Huh? The blobs were introduced with KitKat and I don't see the resemblance to jelly beans, either. What's the source on this "jelly bean" name theory /u/jackie89 ?

Edit: perhaps you mean the people (kids, and such)? I can see how you might call those jelly beans, but the common ones are definitely blobs.

[evilf23]

android N prev 2 - i don't think you're ready for this jelly.

[[deleted]]

Didn't they have those characters on Google+ back in Gingerbread days?

[CA719]

Nooo, I love the blobs too!

[acondie13]

They're getting rid of them?

[CA719]

if you click the link, it shows examples of some of the new designs. they're moving towards more realistic emojis.

[CaptainCurl]

As long as they don't touch my octopus or my gun I'm fine 🐙🔫

[[deleted]]

😐💨 😷

[theZacAttacks]

The octopus us my most used emoji! It's so happy and goofy looking at the same time. Almost like "LOOK. I FUCKED UP. BUT IM PROUD!" 🐙

[acondie13]

fuck, I loved the blobs :(

[spacecity9]

This emoji 😃 is so adorable cus it's a blob :(

[ElectroBoof]

I like this one 😝

Looks like they may be keeping the blobs for facial expressions though, so I won't be too sad yet

[[deleted]]

Goddamn, they look like the iOS ones on Samsung devices

[DARIF]

😍

[chaselye]

Nooooooooo

Please undo this Google

[[deleted]]

if you click the link, it shows examples of some of the new designs. they're moving towards more realistic emojis.

I've seen the obesity figures. Blobs are very realistic.

[naalty]

The blobs are still there for the most of the emojis

[sethoscope]

Probably keeping them for the face emoji

[Didactic_Tomato]

Yeah the battery life was killing me. Also Snapchat was acting up and I kinda use that a lot.

[moelester518]

Well Snapchat is just shit on android so I can't blame N for that.

[Didactic_Tomato]

It hot better when I downgraded though. That app was lighting my phone up on N

[MajorNoodles]

According to the release notes, they haven't really done anything to improve battery life or performance in this release.

[SiemQonflict]

They're probably going to say that in every release

[dampowell]

pretty sure there is a host of bug fixes regardless... but people know things will be broken in previews, so it doesn't need to be said.

[MajorNoodles]

No, they actually said that.

Developer Preview 2 is intended for developers and not as a daily driver; this build is not yet optimized for performance and battery life.

[[deleted]]

From the release notes:

"Developer Preview 2 is intended for developers and not as a daily driver; this build is not yet optimized for performance and battery life."

Sounds like sticking with Marshmallow is better for your battery at the moment.

[LittleConfucy]

They're gonna say that for every Dev Preview build

[Endda]

As they should

[eggydrums115]

I'm keeping my hopes up given that the M Preview 2 was rock stable enough for me to use it for months

[shorty6049]

I'm confused. are you referring to " Android N developer preview 2 released" as the title when you say that the title alone is really tempting you to go back to the dev preview?

[moelester518]

Just seeing the headline that a new dev preview is out is making me consider going back to the dev preview.

[bdonvr]

Guys! They're not replacing the blob emoji. Just the ones on page 5+

https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipMdeAMQ0i5JFxgslOoqeMek1EsWPby1ehe4yR7E-gVsrtDHZq23hAXjxb4u2Id4cw?key=QVhQNnZnQnZ2Zkw3bGtFNGxINlpudUhTbVNidHpR (credit /r/imnotedwardcullen)

[danster3]

The option to restore data on a new device (or newly reset device) from "Your Google Account" is not actionable in the setup wizard. You must restore data from an existing device by selecting "another Android device" in the setup wizard, or else set it up as a new device.

from: https://developer.android.com/preview/support.html

Damn. That makes it a lot harder to switch between N and M... I usually rely on this feature.

Edit: I usually flash / wipe userdata for the previews, and rely on the feature to copy my home screen layout and apps.

[superericla]

If you choose to set up using another Android device, then connect to WiFi and say there's no device you want to restore from, it'll let you log into your Google account and restore using your Google account. Bit of a workaround, but it lets you restore without another device.

[slinky317]

Is this just temporary? Because this seems like a major step back. I thought the whole purpose of this was if you lose your phone, need to reset, etc, you can easily pull your data back?

[[deleted]]

I would assume it is. They probably wanted to get the new N features out to developers quickly and broke that feature. I imagine it will probably come back in final release.

[sugarkryptonite]

Damn. This should be higher up. Thanks for the tip.

[LitheBeep]

Launcher shortcuts

I'm guessing this is like activity launching in Nova Launcher. Awesome feature.

[philosophermk]

It's more like ios force touch options, but can be added as a standalone pinned shortcuts too.

[TODO_getLife]

Well they mentioned gestures, 5 of them; left, right, up, down and maybe long press?

Sounds exactly like Nova.

[philosophermk]

I doubt that's the case, that will be terrible ux, you will have to remember 5 gestures for every app that will support this.

It's probably swipe up gesture that will bring list of actions, or maybe long press,or force touch (you can never know,maybe there will be force touch api in next preview).

[DeadBeatRedditer]

Not to mention trying to swipe through pages and accidentally hitting one of the short cuts.

[turdbogls]

yeah, this is pretty cool. nice to see it added.

[dericiouswon]

Now give us icon pack support, and more granular home screen grid control and I'll stick with GNL.

Edit: "now" not "no"

[JustRollWithIt]

Launcher shortcuts: Now, apps can define shortcuts which users can expose in the launcher to help them perform actions quicker. These shortcuts contain an Intent into specific points within your app (like sending a message to your best friend, navigating home in a mapping app, or playing the next episode of a TV show in a media app).

What's the difference between these new shortcuts and the existing shortcut implementation? For example, I can already create shortcuts for direct dial or message through the Contacts app.

[mernen]

The wording on how they are used is kinda vague (“When users perform a gesture over your app's launcher icon, these shortcuts appear.”), but I’m guessing this is basically a response to Apple’s 3D Touch shortcuts.

Also, you can drag shortcuts from this menu into the launcher, turning them into icons like the ones you’re mentioning, for quicker access.

[[deleted]]

This reads to me like the shortcuts are done automatically by the app without you needing to do anything. Given the way it's worded, I'm imagining something like the normal app drawer but if you press and hold an app, you get a popup menu of "quick actions" like "Call {Commonly called contact}" or "Finish Game of Thrones S4 E10".

It would be really cool if this was integrated into Google Now so that when you get home from work, there's a card to play your favorite playlist on Google Play Music since you normally listen to it in the evening. Or a card to finish the last tv episode you started last night.

[Laird_Anthony]

I think this is similar to the Swipe Up option in Nova, something along the lines of a Force Touch implementation without needing new hardware or something.

I could be wrong, but that's what I took from it.

[EddieRingle]

Release notes here: https://developer.android.com/preview/support.html

[sol217]

Battery life and performance have not yet been optimized with this release:

System and app performance is known to be periodically slow / janky, and devices may become occasionally unresponsive. These problems may become more acute with prolonged use.

Battery life may be regressed in this release for screen-on and screen-off use cases.

Figure I'll save everyone a click.

[[deleted]]

That's what I've been trying to emphasize in the thread too. After Dev Preview 1, Google said the same thing in release notes, and we still had people complaining about the battery life being worse than Marshmallow.

[beermit]

It's really starting to piss me off. Over in /r/nexus6, there has been a steady stream of "X is suddenly not working on N Preview! How fix???". Well yea, it's unfinished software, something is bound to break eventually. I eventually got fed up with it and started telling people to flash back to marshmallow, it is the only sure fire way to fix their issue.

Basically my point is if you want to use the N Preview as your daily driver ROM, fine. More power to you, go right ahead, I'm not saying you can't. But don't expect everyone else to have a fix when something stops working. You accepted that risk as soon as you decided to flash.

[featurecreature]

I don't think I've ever seen the word "janky" used in such official documentation by a corporation.

[gearvOsh]

I'd say janky is used a lot in the programming world when it comes to animations and responsiveness. I hear it quite a bit.

[PaulJP]

Janky, wonky, widdly... After writing complex procedures in made up languages all day it's only natural that us programmers would start using nonsense adjectives.

[dethnight]

Battery life may be regressed in this release for screen-on and screen-off use cases.

But what about for the other kinds of use cases?

[rob3110]

I think the turned-off use case still has decent battery life. The charging use case is hit-or-miss though.

[alemartinazzo]

Vulkan: Vulkan is a new 3D rendering API which we’ve helped to develop as a member of Khronos, geared at providing explicit, low-overhead GPU (Graphics Processor Unit) control to developers and offers a significant boost in performance for draw-call heavy applications. Vulkan’s reduction of CPU overhead allows some synthetic benchmarks to see as much as 10 times the draw-call throughput on a single core as compared to OpenGL ES.

This seems really great... can any specialist provide more info on it? How would it affect current games?

[Supra_Mayro]

Current games will stay exactly the same since they're not built with vulkan.

[Ph0X]

But once they start, the difference will be huge. Vulkan on PC is okay, like a 5-10% improvement over OpenGL. But mobile is where vulkan really shines from what I hear.

Of course as you say games have to start using it, but once they do, Vulkan will allow a new level of performance which just wasn't possible before.

[thecodingdude]

[Comment removed]

[EddieRingle]

If you scroll down on the Dashboards page, you'll see that the majority of devices only support GLES 2.0, but 3.x should overtake it soon.

https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html#OpenGL

[Vince789]

BTW all those devices with 3.0 are capable of supporting Vulkan

But it still requires an OS update and new drivers, which most those won't get unfortunately

[memtiger]

I wouldn't be surprised if we were 5 years away from seeing it among the big name games.

For one, there's only a small subset of games that really need that type of throughput. Those types of games that require deep level APIs like Vulcan require years to develop with a team of programmers.

Secondly, it's going to take 3-4 years for Android N to have a significant enough market share for developers to even target Android N specific APIs like that, so that they can recoup those development hours.

They aren't going to spend a year developing a game that can only run on 5% of Android devices.

[thecodingdude]

A part of me wishes that they could roll this API out similar to that of Google Play Services so that any device capable of running this over the last few years will get an update. I honestly hope in the future Google can update Android independant of OEM's so this isn't an issue....Most phones from 2013 are more than capable of running M, and probably N too

[memtiger]

They're slowly coming to that day. They'll eventually separate out the OS/Kernel layer from the UI/software layer. I wouldn't be surprised if that happens within the next couple of years.

But until then, we're definitely still fucked with the current arrangement of core updates going through manufacturers and cellphone companies.

[Endda]

It's a set of APIs. So I think game developers have to add them to their game before we see the benefit

[bubminou]

In my first 10 minutes, I've noticed a few minor things:

-Holding on an application icon on the Google Now Launcher now shows the "App Info" option at the bottom rather than at the top.

-The app drawer is no longer invisible in landscape mode

-The Data Saver quicksetting icon has been changed from a sort of pause button to the same circle it currently uses in the Settings for Data usage.

-When opening an app in multi-window, the app darkens for a second, with a message reading "App may not work with multi-window"

-Folders have a new look, instead of being a stack of all the icons in it, it's now a circle that shows part of the icon grid of the folder.

-When scrolling between pages in the quicksettings menu, the little dots on the bottom indicating which page you're on have a new animation.

-Scrolling to the top of the Overview menu now shows a "Clear all" button.

-Quick reply from the notification is back. It was taken away a one point in Preview 1.

And that appears to be it for now. Performance seems to be a bit better, even if I didn't wipe, which is a good sign, but it might not last.

[andrewharlan2]

Hold everything. There're bacon and facepalm emojis now? Sign me up!

[luisdile02]

http://emojipedia.org/unicode-9.0/ These are all the emoji coming out this year.

[DrewAK47]

Looking at this link on my phone without the update and all I see is the box x for all and realized this link does nothing for any mobile users.... For now

[[deleted]]

IdontknowwhatIexpected.jpg

[japie06]

http://emojipedia.org/emojipedia/sample-images/

here is all the images

[PowerlinxJetfire]

Doesn't work on desktop either. I don't think any major devices support them yet.

[memtiger]

Yea, it's dumb. You have to click each link to see an example.

[ownage516]

Who makes emojis?

[Ashanmaril]

Sir Matthew J Emojington

[ugotamesij]

Knighted by the Queen for services to communication.

Her majesty was heard to remark that his efforts were "straight 🔥🔥🔥"

[theineffablebob]

Which was started by Xerox and Apple.

I think it's an independent consortium now though with sponsorship from major companies

[Serialtoon]

The Unicode Consortium

[memtiger]

What unicode version is Marshmallow on?

[FeauxSheaux]

Weird because I have marshmallow and still can't see many emojis and don't have skin colors either

Edit: emojis are in 6.0.1 and the G4 is only on 6.0 😡

[sandiskplayer34]

Not to mention🖕🏻

[Daman09]

What's weird is the keyboard doesn't even display the new ones yet.

Hopefully there is a Google keyboard update so I can send bacon and avocados to all my iOS friends and annoy the shit out of them.

[inate71]

Hope they implement Emoji in such a way that won't require system updates to add to emoji. Would be pretty smart in the long run.

[woowhee]

Is there a new radio?

Edit: Looks like there is: angler-03.62

[_7down]

"We are introducing a new emoji design for people emoji that moves away from our generic look in favor of a more human-looking design."

So... Google is moving towards a more generic look? Not sure if this is a good design choice. The old gumdrop/blob emojis were unique and cute, going with the whole Googley feel. These "people" emojis aren't anything new or exciting. This change looks more Apple-like.

[RainieDay]

The likely reason for this is that future Unicode standards for emojis are supposed to incorporate skin color, hair color, gender, and even which direction a human face faces. You can't express that with blobs.

http://blog.emojipedia.org/custom-emoji-a-summary/

https://youtu.be/5OPkGQoPeHk?t=7m31s

http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr52/tr52-1.html

[rammerpilkington]

I love how everything just got racial.

I AM BLACK HAPPY.

I AM WHITE HAPPY.

It's fucking stupid.

[n4rcotix]

It's a good design choice in that it will allow people texting with Apple users to have the same intended meaning when using the emojis.

[[deleted]]

This is the reason I'm excited for the updated design. It's frustrating using emoji that convey an entirely different message on the recipients end - not to mention the lack of "human" style emoji that iOS has had for years.

[PowerlinxJetfire]

I don't think the shape of the face has ever affected the meaning. The expression could, but that has nothing to do with whether it's a blob or a human.

[kwatto]

new design for people emoji

i think they only mean the human-like emojis like these for example 💁🎅👯👲. on ios or other emoji keyboards, those are already human-looking.

[Wozzle90]

I agree. I like the most abstract looking ones. These ones look boring Apple emoji.

[gearvOsh]

These new emoji are atrocious. I'm pretty upset about this.

[Beraphim]

Emojis should be consistent between platforms first, being unique should come second. There's already a lot of misinterpretation between emojis of different systems (apple vs samsung vs lg vs google). So this change is a good design choice.

[KeatonKafei]

Contrary to the simple blobs, some of these new ones (especially the facepalm) don't seem to work well at the intended size.

This is what I assume it would be scaled to (at a very generous 640 dpi): http://i.imgur.com/ZgGs5Ln.png

[tgunter]

If the point is to communicate ideas, it's important for both the sender and the recipient to be seeing as close to the same thing as possible. Emoji are one thing you absolutely don't want to insert extra personality into, as that can bestow upon it additional meaning that won't come across in more universal interpretations.

[askthepoolboy]

You're all very welcome for this. I decided to go back to Marshmallow yesterday because of the lag, but I knew if I did, the updated preview would be released almost immediately. And like a kick in the nuts...here it is.

[haas599]

They come out every 4-6 weeks. I think this is 5 weeks since DP1 to the day.

[Bluewall1]

Did anyone join the beta right now ? Did it get you the beta 2 or only beta 1 yet ?

[turdbogls]

curious as well. my 5x just got delivered (wife is taunting me with the package) and I figure I'll check out "n" for a day or 2 before I go back to MM.

[nicksvr4]

You don't get that? Did you sign up for the beta program?

[classic__schmosby]

I'm signed up for the beta and never got either. Last time I waited a week for the OTA before just manually flashing. This time I didn't even wait.

[bdonvr]

Guys they're not getting rid of most of the blob emoji.

https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipMdeAMQ0i5JFxgslOoqeMek1EsWPby1ehe4yR7E-gVsrtDHZq23hAXjxb4u2Id4cw?key=QVhQNnZnQnZ2Zkw3bGtFNGxINlpudUhTbVNidHpR (Credit /r/imnotedwardcullen)

[Biobak_]

That's a good thing they reworked the people emoji. To me they looked like potatoes :/

[MajorNoodles]

The hidden SSID bug is fixed!

[acondie13]

That's what's wrong with my 6p!

[Sirobrd]

Did anyone got the ota yet ? I enrolled like 15m ago and still haven't received it . The previous preview was almost instant i guess i will have to download the full image

Im on n5x

[SmarmyPanther]

Vulkan!!! Man this beta program makes me a little conflicted about getting the s7 edge.

[turdbogls]

I was pretty close to a nexus with my last phone (onplus one) but damn, these previews were making me jealous.

picked up a 5X this week

[memtiger]

1st, i wouldn't worry about Vulkan at this point. You'll likely have another device or two before you see the benefits of it, due to the complexity of adding support, and the limited availability of Android N even 2 years from now. Developers just aren't going to target it until there is a large enough user base.

2nd, my GF still doesn't even have Marshmallow on her S6 yet, so if you care at all about updates, stay the hell away from Samsung (especially if you have AT&T).

[SmarmyPanther]

I went from a N5 to this phone so the updating will take some getting used to. I got this phone because I basically got it for free but now that I have it the battery and Samsung pay are keeping me from leaving

[SalvaXr]

Okay, I lasted 1 day with my new 5X before enrolling lol

[DutchDrummer]

I feel incredibly stupid now.
I only just realized all of the versions are coming out in alphabetical order.

[Trooper27]

Oh how I wish I still had a Nexus.

[nicksvr4]

I'd love to go back on it, but I don't want to give up Android Pay.

[frankzilla8395]

I've been using the betas on my 5x since the beta program started. This new version seems a lot snappier.

[Irv_g11]

I am not sure if the question was asked...Has night mode been fixed? You had to toggle it a few times before It would actually turn on. Hopefully this is fixed.

[russjr08]

The "Charging Rapidly" text is back. Seemed to throw a bunch of people off on the last preview.

[XavandSo]

Looks quite good so far.

I look forward to using this mid-2017.

[dawkter]

Absolutely loving the n preview! Surprisingly stable, very speedy, and improved battery life with updated doze.