LG Electronics Australia have announced this morning that the Android 6.0 Marshmallow update will be here in Australia for LG G4 users from mid November. While users overseas can expect to receive their updates starting next week, Australia has to wait a little longer, and this is no doubt due (in part) to the various carrier approval processes that are required here.
We already know much of what will be coming in Android Marshmallow, but LG has highlighted three features that it thinks are important for the update:
- Permissions Simplification: This will make it much easier for users to control what information individual apps can access on their phone. Before Android M, users could only grant apps permission on an ‘all or nothing’ basis on installation, but now users can choose at any time which features and data apps can access
- Advanced Silent Feature: The user will have much more control over which sounds or vibrations the phone makes in different modes. For example, the ‘Do Not Disturb’ mode allows alarms to be on ‘loud’ whilst all other notifications are kept silent
- Doze Mode: This feature gets more life out of your battery by cleverly ‘shutting down’ apps which are open but dormant, meaning the user won’t have to worry if they forget to ‘close all’ on the cascading app menu.
I think it’s fairly clear that LG will curry a lot of favour with its customers by potentially being the first to market with Android 6.0 updates for existing customers (except for Nexus handsets). On that, it’s likely that LG’s close collaboration with Google has lead to the update being released quickly, with LG’s Vice President of Marketing Communications Chris Yie saying:
“By working closely with Google, LG has been able to bring Android 6.0 to the LG G4 soon after the global launch of the new OS.While speed alone isn’t an indicator of great service, it does go a long way towards giving consumers the confidence that LG is committed to its existing customers first.”
LG have undertaken to give us further information closer to the available date, but from today, it looks like that wait could be around four weeks or even a touch less. Good news for LG G4 owners!
