The Google I/O event for 2014 was a huge hit as expected, but because none of us was assigned a developer account we haven’t had the pleasure of using the Android L Developer Preview. That hasn’t stopped us reading all about it because I for one am very interested in what is going down considering the last couple of Android Kitkat builds have been lackluster in features.
If you don’t already know, the Mountain View company has their own line of Google smartphones and tablet under the ‘Nexus” name and two of the freshest variants are the Nexus 5 and the Nexus 7. Owners of the smartphone and tablet can already port Android L, but today news broke of the unofficial port officially being available from Nexus 4 owners too.
With the help of six other developers that he has tagged in the twitter accounts, Senior XDA Developers member, Sykopompos, posted this thread yesterday showing his work is now complete. The first thing you’ll notice on the page is the new wallpaper that we all know represents Android L is showing on the Nexus 4 handset.
The new software version, namely Android L is steadily becoming the equivalent of what iOS 7 was for the iPhone and iPad users. Described as the biggest change in IOS since its beginnings Android have now decided to follow suit and drastically change over their OS. From all reports so far they’ve done a great job of it because I’m not hearing anywhere near as many negative murmurs as I was from the Apple developers.
Just like with Apple’s first attempt, the new Develop Preview is bug riddled and it will take time before it’s smooth enough to rollout for most people in the world. However, if you are dying to check out what is in store for the next generation of ANdroid-based software on mobile devices, then no doubt you’ll be willing to risk a few bugs for all the pleasure it will bring.
To install the port all you need to do is download the zip file here from Android File Host, copy the file over to the smartphones internal memory, reboot it into the custom recovery of choice and format the system. from there install the zip and the new firmware will present itself once you go back and restart the handset one more time.
In order to achieve that you need to have an unlocked bootloader and root access first. That way the custom recovery will work without any dramas.
I recommend performing a full backup of the OS If you have root already try to use an application available from the Google Play Store such as Helium, Titanium or take an NANDroid backup. You want to make copies of the songs, movies, video footage, photos, SMS texts and contacts. Alternatively users can sync the device with the Google account registered to the handset and sync from there.
If you have any questions, shoot us a comment and we’ll get back to you soon.