So, Android Nougat is officially out today.

If I enroll my Nexus 6P to the Andorid Beta Program today, will I get Nougat final version, or will I get a beta? What do you guys think?

I'd normally be OK with the beta, but I have 2 weeks of travelling ahead of me and while I'd love to see Nougat, I'd rather not have a beta version of it.

Don't even consider it if you are about to be travelling for a few weeks.

The images are not yet available from Google for download:
https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/ota
https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/images

This link (below) is reputedly the OTA file for Nougat on the Nexus 6P:

https://android.googleapis.com/packages/...2aba8c29fbe.zip

Source/instructions:
http://wccftech.com/download-android-nougat/
http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/08/22/...us-ota-roundup/

I saw one preliminary report that the Nexus 6P was notably more toasty running Android 7.

If you want to go for it, AndroidPolice is tracking the OTA images as they become available (http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/08/22/...us-ota-roundup/).

This requires you to have a boot recovery installed, which requires your phone to be unlocked, which in turn kills off your ability to use Android Pay. (Grrr.) So I'm going to wait until the OTA arrives via the auto-updater.

No, unlock is not required, at least not according to the instructions there. So stock recovery should be sufficient.

On my vanilla Nexus 5X, I tried booting into recovery, but there isn't a recovery there! It just shows an icon with the BugDroid and a red triangle with an exclamation point. The only way to install a recovery is if you unlock the device, at least so far as I can tell.

EDIT: the solution, if you must have it right now, seems to be to use this beta program, which was meant for getting Android 7 betas and apparently short-circuits you to the Android 7 final release.

... thanks Guys, for the info and for your recommendations.

Ok, never mind. I'll play with this when I am back, unless I get it OTA via the standard auto-update channel, before I leave next tuesday.

I usually end up really far down the roll out list. I wonder how they choose the order these phones get the update in.

So what happens when you then hit the Volume Up/Down buttons while in that state? On my old old Galaxy Nexus, doing so revealed a "hidden" recovery menu.

My Nexus 5X doesn't have stock recovery on it now, so I cannot re-test it easily with that.

Cheers

Nothing happens at all. I have to long-press the power button and force a reboot.

I remember it working just like this article describes:

http://www.robschmuecker.com/how-to-boot-into-recovery-mode-nexus-7/


From the "dead robot" screen, do this:

Ah hah! I just followed these instruction. it took 9 minutes just to do the adb sideload, but it worked and my phone is now happily (?) booting itself into Nougat.

Excellent!
Please keep us all informed with how it functions/feels.

Thanks.

I'd never heard of adb sideload, sounds like that might fix my dead Lenovo tablet, put it on charge now to try tomorrow.

Well that didn't work!

From the system recovery screen I selected "apply update from ADB" from my PC I ran "adb sideload lenovo.tar.gz"

It gets up to 100% on the PC no problems, but then comes up with "Installation Aborted" on the tablet.

It's a Lenovo A7600 that got killed by a firmware update, I'm trying to load Android 4.4.2 from Lenovo website

Any clues?

Lenovo have 2 downloads available, 4.2 which is 342mb or 4.4 which is 139mb. Does that mean I need the 4.4 isn't the full OS?

Nope, installation of the older version also aborted

The stock Android update files are zip files, not tar.gz files. It's possible that Lenovo changed things around for their phones.

You should see if CyanogenMod supports your device. No doubt there are all sorts of hairy instructions to unlock your phone and install an Android "recovery" like TWRP, so only then will it be capable of installing CyanogenMod. Still, that may be your best bet.

Okay, it sounds as if you are willing to reinitialize the device from scratch. So try this, which may or may not work depending upon how Lenovo's bootloader works:

Connect the device over USB to a PC which has the Android adb and fastboot commands. Linux is simplest here, because no special drivers are required. Then do this:

Press and hold POWER+VOLUME_DOWN until you get a bootloader prompt.

On the PC, issue this command:

fastboot oem unlock

Does that work? If not, then you'll have to google how to "unlock the bootloader" on your specific device. Otherwise, continue:

If it doesn't reboot automatically now, then reboot the tablet from the PC:

fastboot reboot

Does it come up working just fine now? If not, continue on.
Download the appropriate "TWRP Recovery image" for your tablet, and install it:

Press and hold POWER+VOLUME_DOWN until you get a bootloader prompt.

On the PC, issue this command:

fastboot flash recovery NAME_OF_TWRP_RECOVERY_FILE.img

If that worked, you now have a fully hackable tablet, and you can install a new operating system from scratch onto it. Cyanogenmod 13 (Android 6.0) is an excellent choice, if available for your tablet.

Thanks, will see how I get on.

I just got the N update last night. I'm...meh on it. I'm not really a fan of the new notifications. They're...blockier? I think they've gone too far in the flat design direction. There's a lot of white space, and it seems like fewer notifications fit on the screen at once. They also feel more difficult to work with, but that might just take some getting used to.

One thing that bothered me tremendously at first was that I thought you couldn't access the quick settings shade from the lock screen. I do this all the time to adjust the screen brightness, turn on the flashlight, or put the phone in priority mode all without having to unlock the phone first. But when I dragged the shade down it would always pop back up in a behavior that made it seem like it wasn't allowed until the phone was unlocked. I even went to the Google Groups about it and a very helpful person told me to try stopping my finger swipe about half way down the screen. It seems I was pulling the shade TOO FAR and it was popping back up again.

This is just annoying because it's clearly a new behavior. It didn't function like that in the previous OS version, so they purposefully changed this. It seems to me that pulling all the way down would make it even clearer what my intended action was, but apparently not.

*end rant*

Anyway, I can't really tell if the phone is faster but it sort of feels like it. There are minor things about the new notifications that I like, like the ability to perform actions on individual emails when there's more than one.

I also like the ability to edit the quick settings shade. So far I've only removed location services (I never turn that off) and added Chromecast.

Other than that I can't even tell what's new. Does anyone have a good summary of the new features?

One nice new thing is that you can double-tap on the square-button that shows you all your running apps, and it acts kind of like hitting Alt-Tab on a PC, letting you toggle between your two most recent apps.

Perhaps more importantly, you can enable "Night Mode" which turns the screen yellow at night, kinda like f.lux does.

You mean, just exactly like a double-tap on the home button on iOS?

No, the double tap on iOS just brings up the task switcher, it doesn't toggle between the last two apps.

Oh I see. I misunderstood the description. Normally a single tap on the square button would show all your running apps. Now they have added a most-recent-task-swap if you double tap.

So, significantly different than iOS. Gotcha.

No Lenovos listed

This might be my favorite addition to the OS in years! I switch between two open apps all the time, and this is going to make that SO MUCH easier! Thanks for mentioning that one.

I'll look into the night mode, but so far I'm not a huge fan of that. My wife uses it on her iPhone, and maybe if I can tell it to make only the slightest of color temperature change, that would be ok. But when I see her yellow phone it just looks so gross to me. It's funny though, because I usually prefer the warmer color spectrum, and only put 2700K bulbs in our house. Anyway, I'll play with it. Thanks for mentioning that too.

Yep. iOS's implementation is a bit different here. It's a 3D touch-slide from the left side, though only for the 2 current models that support 3D touch (iPhone 6s and 6s+).

Which sadly I find difficult to trigger, doubly so when you have even Apples case on the phone (which for me at least is required, with the slippery 6/6s design).

Hasn't that been there since Lollipop? I know my (Cyanogenmod) Marshmallow distro has it.