The moment Android fans had been waiting for has finally arrived! Google has announced the release of Android 5.0 Lollipop – the latest version of the world’s most popular mobile platform. Google is throwing in their latest OS with their new debutants: the Nexus 6 smartphone, Nexus 9 tablet and the Nexus Player streaming device. For those of you with the Nexus 4, 5, 7, 10 and Google Play Edition devices, Google will be reaching out to you in the coming weeks!

Google’s next big release of Android, currently simply known as Android L is only a short time away from release and it’s certain to undergo a name change before landing on the phones and tablets of users around the globe. In order to follow along with the current naming convention of choosing a name based on desserts that begin with the next letter in a sequence, Google only has so many options to choose from.

October will be a huge month for Android. As well as the introduction of Google’s new Moto X-like Nexus smartphone, there’s also the small matter of the rumored Android L release to contend with, and although the Nexus will surely be the first to ship with the Big G’s new mobile OS out of the box, Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S5 won’t be too far behind. In spite of the fact that we don’t know precisely when Android L will roll out, let alone when it will hit the S5, a video has already hit the Web showing the Korean company’s prized asset running on the impending software.

Google makes a habit of coinciding major new versions of Android with a new smartphone release, and with Android L having already been unleashed at I/O earlier on this year, we’re now waiting on the successor to the Nexus 5. Although widely presumed to be called the Nexus 6, for rather obvious reasons, it now looks as though the next-gen handset will be called the Nexus X as Google tries to avoid any copyright issues, but despite the name-change, the actual device still looks set to impress us with some beastly specs. Today, we’ve gotten wind of some new details, as well as some more leaked info pertaining to Android L, and below, you can get up to speed.

Google’s unique nomenclature for its Android operating system has always been something of interest to even the most staunch opponents of the platform. The Mountain View company opted for an unprecedented culture of naming Android versions after various desserts from around the globe, and so far, we’ve seen the likes of Éclair, Froyo, Jelly Bean, and KitKat, to name a few. The next iteration might be just around the corner, and it’s the time for the letter L, and Android L is what Google has been using in all its references to the next Android version as well. Today, however, new evidence points towards L standing for Lemon Meringue Pie.

Google has just pushed out updated factory images for the developer preview of Android L. The release, which currently supports the Nexus 5 smartphone and Nexus 7 tablet, adds Google Fit compatibility, and as we near the end user build of Android L set to roll out this fall, it would seem that the search giant is working doggedly to ensure all of the features are in place.

Google’s Android L, which the search giant took the unprecedented step of launching at I/O this time around, offers a bunch of improvements over KitKat. Notably, it’s laden with an all-new “Material Design,” but aside from tweaking the aesthetics, there are plenty of enhancements on the functionality side of things. As it has just emerged, multi-user support is also in the offing for smartphones, and given how families and groups like to share devices, seems a natural progression that perhaps should have arrived much earlier.

At the I/O Developers Conference, Google took the opportunity to unearth several new products, and among them was Android L, the next major release of the company’s flagship mobile OS. Much was made at the time, and since, of the so-called ‘Material Design’ that would see the the interface overhauled from the ground up with layering and other effects helping to make the operating system feel more alive and active. The UI, it was also said, would be a lot more clean, and below, you can catch a pretty decent glimpse of how some of the search company’s own apps like apps like YouTube, Gmail and Maps may eventually look.

Having visually compared Android L with KitKat, we found out that Google is pushing hard to take Android one step further from where it stands right now. But how does it compare to its fiercest upcoming rival, iOS 8? That’s exactly what we’re going to find out, by comparing Android L preview with iOS 8 beta, visually.

The next major version of Android, dubbed as ‘L’ (Lollipop?) was announced by Google at its I/O developer conference in San Francisco. Android L brought with it a ton of new changes, most of which are for developers. But the user-facing end got a neat facelift too, and as ever, we took the latest OS from the search giant for a spin on a Nexus 5, and couldn’t help comparing it with last year’s offering, Android KitKat.

Google’s new Android L may only be at preview stage, with the fact that it hasn’t even been given a proper name yet being a testament to this, but nevertheless, we’re already seeing some encouraging signs of improvements that have been made. Namely, the company is shooting for an all-new “Material Design” language, which is set to give the interface a more layered, vibrant feel, and although we’re still quite away from the end user release, I’m sure many of you cannot wait to run Android L on your devices. If you don’t fancy going ahead and installing the preview on the Nexus 7 or Nexus 5, then thankfully, there’s a theme floating about that allows you to achieve a similar look on your current handset.

This year’s Google I/O was undeniably one of the more interesting and fruitful Google gatherings that we’ve seen for some time. In the middle of the plethora of announcements made during the keynote we managed to get an insight into Project Volta, Google’s latest internal crack at singling out a weakness within its Android platform and fixing it. Last year it was Project Butter that stole the limelight by attempting to make animations within Android run at 60 frames-per-second. This time around the Volta team will concentrate attention on various aspects of Android in an attempt to improve battery life. The good news? Early investigations into Android L suggests that the hard work is proving fruitful.