Transcript: Ars talks to Android execs about Lollipop and the Nexuses

We recently got to speak to some executives from the Android team about the upcoming Nexus 6, 9, and Android 5.0, Lollipop. We turned out a hands-on article and an interview post from the meeting, but some people wanted a transcript of the interview. So here you go!

This is the mostly raw transcript from our conversation with Google. We skipped the hands-on discussion because without the context of the device in front of you, it's not very useful. The conversation is with Dave Burke, VP of engineering for the Android platform and Nexus devices, Brian Rakowski, VP of product management, and Gabe Cohen, the Android team's group product manager.

Again, we've curated the important parts in this article, and this is just for people who want to dig through the whole interview. Enjoy!

Ars: Now that you guys are mostly done with the developer preview process, how do you feel about how it went? Would you do it again?

Dave Burke: I think it went well. It was good to actually do it at Google I/O because it was the right conference for developers to get access to it. It was cool because we could get APIs out and get feedback. I like it. I want to do it again.

Brian Rakowski: Yes, definitely. I think we learned a lot, too. At I/O I think we said we had 5,000 new APIs. That should have been how many APIs there were [in the final version] but now there are 7000+. So our eyes were bigger than our stomachs somewhat and we kept adding stuff.

Gabe Cohen: It was actually really good to stabilize mid-year like that and get something that was actually livable. We had a lot of people download the preview and give us feedback on APIs. We made a lot of adjustments on them between the first preview and the SDK we delivered last Friday. We hope that by getting the final SDK and preview images out a few weeks in advance of the actual release, people can update their apps and can fix things, and maybe start taking advantage of the final Material APIs before L starts rolling out.

Burke: I think it enables us to do bigger things and make bigger changes. We changed the whole runtime out to the 64-bit ART runtime and were able to bring in Material Design. We would be much more timid about those things if we couldn't give developers... [advance warning].

Cohen: [interjecting] So what you're saying is, next year we're going to break a whole lot more stuff.

Burke: Another advantage of the preview is because we have so many people working on it, it means we get it out earlier to partners so that partners can start bringing up devices and getting those ready so when L goes out finally, I think what you'll see this time around is more devices on L quicker than any release before, because they've had more time.

Ars: Weren't OEMs getting this advanced access before with the PDK?

Burke: Some of them were, but not as wide. Because we revealed this stuff at I/O, we're in a position to be able to share it a little more broadly this time around, and I think that helps a lot and greases the wheels of the ecosystem.

Ars: In Lollipop you unbundled WebView. Has there been any more work toward unbundling anything else?

Burke: WebView was a tough one, and a really important one, because something like 70 or 80 percent of apps in the Play Store have a WebView for one reason or another. WebView encapsulates Blink (Chrome's rendering engine) which is a very large surface area, so you want to be able to constantly update that for performance and security reasons. That was a big initiative. We haven't unbundled any other components.

Cohen: We've been laying groundwork all over the board to make certain parts of the system potentially into apps, but just groundwork. A significant portion of the lock screens' functionality is now unbundled, at least the security aspects of it.

[Demo time! On to the Nexus 6.]

Burke: I use the device a smaller portion of the time for voice calls, so the question you want to ask is, 'What's the ideal size for a pocket internet device?' For me personally, when I moved to this device, I noticed after a couple of days I was using this more hours per day than any other device I've used before. I was reaching for my laptop less and less, I was virtually not reaching for my Nexus 7, and it just has to do with the form factor, the size, it's just much more comfortable. And for me I won't go back now. It's not for everyone, different people will have different preferences of course, but I think a surprising amount of people will find that they'll prefer the bigger screen because it's conducive to the tasks they're trying to achieve most of the time.

Burke: With both devices this year we're aiming for the premium end, so premium materials and premium parts like an aluminum frame. The materials are really high quality.

Ars: Is that the goal you were going with this year? Premium?

Burke: One of the reasons we do Nexus is to show the way forward and show what's possible and for us to make the platform real, so this year we decided we'd go on the more premium end. From a cost perspective we're also working more with the carriers. The Nexus 6 will be available on all the different carriers, so typically you'll be paying contract price.

Ars: How much control do carriers have over the Nexus devices? People think back to the Verizon Galaxy Nexus, and it got slower updates.

Burke: I don't think we're going to do that. There is carrier testing that has to happen, you can't get away from that, but we're trying to have our updates be frequent. I think the carriers are learning and realizing that's a feature they want. I think these are getting more efficient, and we're getting better at it. Play Auto Installs are also really important.

Ars: Play Auto Installs? What?

Burke: So the idea is as part of setup, Verizon might have some apps that you want like an app that tells you how much you used that month in terms of charges. There's legitimate use cases where you want apps, but you also want those apps to be treated like any other app. What happens now is when you've got a Verizon SIM in the device, it actually installs Verizon apps as part of the setup flow, and then you can remove them if you want as part of the Play Infrastructure. And Verizon can update it.

Cohen: They're not on the system partition.

Ars: Oh ok, so you can remove them?

Cohen: Yes.

Ars: When Lollipop first boots up, the first thing it does is check for updates. What is it checking for?

Burke: In the setup wizard?

Ars: Yeah, the second you turn it on for the first time, it says "searching for updates."

Cohen: Yeah, I don't think we've talked about this much, but there's a lot more update capabilities in setup. We have the ability to push emergency updates during the setup process. These devices establish connectivity and then see if there's some kind of serious problem. If we need to push an OTA down during setup, we'll do that during the setup process, but there are actually other parts of the system we can update during the setup. One of the really interesting and challenging things about stabilizing a platform's release is you kind of have to live with what's in the setup process, because you have to get through setup to get to anything else—including updates, app updates, whatever. So now we have the ability to update more components of the system during the setup process, even without doing a full OTA.

[More demos]

Cohen: One of the things we wanted to do in Lollipop was build platform support for always-on voice. There's a hardware abstraction layer for anyone that has implemented a DSP. A device that actually has a DSP can do low-power detection of a hotword with a model that runs on the DSP.

Ars: The Moto X has special hardware for that...

Cohen: This [the Nexus 6] also has special hardware.

Burke: Yes, I think it's a TI c55 chip, and then as Gabe said, we built a hardware abstraction layer so you can write an implementation for it in hardware.

Ars: So that's the recommended chip for OEMs?

Burke: We don't require any hardware requirements—the Nexus 9 does it too with a different piece of hardware, but the point is Lollipop has a HAL for the hotword API all the way through, and Google [search] takes advantage of it.

Ars: How big of a deal is 64-bit?

Burke: Some things are faster, I think of it as more of a foundation. You're building more for the future. I think the things you'll see an improvement on are things taking advantage of the new instruction set. So typically crypto stuff is lightning fast. But for everyday tasks there isn't going to be a massive difference, some stuff is faster, some stuff's the same. Like I said, the world is going 64-bit, so we want to make sure Android is 64-bit, as it expands into other form factors and grows. I think you'll see a lot more 64-bit silicon starting now, basically. I know a lot of the silicon vendors have 64-bit roadmaps. We basically want to be there ahead of the silicon vendors.

Ars: Is the Nexus 5 going to stick around the whole year?

Burke: I don't know the exact date, but for us, again, I think people want different size devices so it makes sense to have the Nexus 5 for sale. If you look at the marketing site, you'll see the Nexus 5 and Nexus 6.

Rakowski: The Nexus 5 is still a great device. It's held up really well, still super useful, still people demand those devices, so...