Android M: Google focuses on speeding up, polishing mobile operating system in new release

New version of phone OS announced at Google I/O, the company’s developer conference

Google senior vice president of product Sundar Pichai delivers the keynote address during the 2015 Google I/O conference (Getty)

Google has announced the new version of Android, focusing on simplfying and speeding up its operating system for phones.

The new version of the operating system will be released later this year. An initial preview will be released to developers running Google’s own phones, like the Nexus 5 and 6.

Many of the updates focus on performance. That includes simple updates like “dozing”, where devices know if they’ve been left alone for some time and can go into a deeper sleep to save battery. It said the dozing update could mean devices will last twice as long in standby mode.

When phones running Android M do need charging, they will now be able to do so using a new USB standard known as Type C. That lets phones charge much more quickly, as well as providing a more standard charging tool.

The company also said that there were “hundreds” more improvements that would be found as users picked through the new release.

Google said that many of the updates to the operating system had been borrowed from third-party manufacturers. Because the Android operating system is open source, Google gives it to phone manufacturers so that they can add new features – the company said that it is now folding those into the main release.

That includes functions like Google Pay and fingerprint support – both of which been available on Android-powered phones for some time.

The app is known as Android M for the time being, but is likely to get a full, sweet-themed name when it is released. Google has been moving through the alphabet to name its mobile operating system, all united by a sweet theme, with the last one being known as Lollipop.