Nearly three months after Verizon’s Galaxy S5 began getting its helping of Android 5.0, it’s time for the GS4 to get a treat of its own.
Verizon today revealed the Android 5.0 update for its version of the Samsung Galaxy S4. Included in the update are Material Design tweaks with more fluid animations, lock screen notifications, brighter colors in TouchWiz apps, an improved Recent Apps menu, and more.
Verizon hasn’t made any official announcements regarding this update’s rollout, but now that the support documents are live, the update should begin appearing soon if it hasn’t already. To check for the update manually, you Galaxy S4 owners can go into Settings > About phone > Software updates > Check for Updates. While you wait, you can peruse Verizon’s full changelog below.
MATERIAL DESIGN
- Android Lollipop brings the all-new material design offering fluid animations, vivid colored-themes, and 3-D views for a more pleasurable experience
BASIC INTERACTION
- Bolder color and more fluid animations
- The on/off toggle button style updated based on material design
LOCK SCREEN
- The shortcuts for both Phone and Camera are provided for convenience
- Material design-inspired notifications
- Ability to set priority and privacy for notifications on lock screen
- Provide music control as a card to utilize the real estate of the lock screen UI
TOUCHWIZ
- Brighter look and feel, bold colors, fluid animation inspired by material design.
FLOATING ACTION BUTTON
- Floating action buttons provide easy access to the app’s most important features, such as adding a new contact or favorite, or composing a text message.
KNOX
- The container will now have an optional folder-based UI
- The user interaction is reduced and the UI is simpler, so it consumes less memory
- Users who prefer the conventional KNOX UI (launcher base) can choose to use this option in the KNOX settings
RECENTS
- Easy access to your Chrome tabs right from the Recent apps page
- Multi-window icons for ease-of-use during multi-tasking
- Now uses the parallax scrolling effect for easier access