Last week, Google promised it would release Android 6.0 Marshmallow, the latest version of its mobile operating system, to Nexus devices sometime this week. As the company announced this morning, the rollout is now in progress, so if you own a Nexus 5, Nexus 6, Nexus 9, Nexus 7 (2013) or a Nexus Player, you can expect to see your update notification in the near future.
Google’s new Nexus 5X and 6P phones will launch with Android Marshmallow pre-installed. While the new phones will start shipping this month, it’s still unclear when exactly that will happen.
For the most part, there aren’t any revolutionary new features in Android 6.0, but the company has made some useful updates nevertheless. Built-in fingerprint scanner support will mostly be of interest to those who pre-ordered one of the new Nexus phones, but improved standby time and the simplified permissions model will likely make the day-to-day use of the phones and tablets easier.
The marquee feature of Marshmallow is likely “Google Now on Tap,” which can give additional information about anything on your screen by tapping and holding your home button. It still remains to be seen how useful this feature is in daily use, but it sure makes for an impressive demo of Google’s machine learning smarts.
