Yesterday during its I/O 2014 keynote Google showed off Android L. It is the next major update for the Android platform. While it won’t be publicly released until later this year, Google showed off some of the new features and improvements yesterday and also promised to release a preview system image for select devices. One day later it follows through on that promise. The Android L preview system image for Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 (2013 Wi-Fi) has been released and is now available for download.
Design is probably the biggest change in Android L. Google employs something it calls Material Design which makes it much more intuitive and responsive with animations at 60 frames per second. The notification system has been greatly revamped and there’s also a new Recents menu for easy access to most used apps and services.
While these Android L preview system images can be installed on any compatible device, there’s no pre-registration needed as Apple requires with iOS betas, they’re meant only for developers. The software itself isn’t in the final stages yet and won’t really function well as a daily driver. Moreover since a full factory image install is required to get it up and running on the Nexus 5 (hammerhead) or the Nexus 7 (2013 Wi-Fi), all data will be lost during the installation process. So don’t forget to backup if you’re willing to give this a go.
Those who do try it out and later want to revert back to Android 4.4 KitKat can get the restore images for the aforementioned Nexus devices from here. The Android L preview system images can be downloaded from here.