Android 5.0 Lollipop rolling out to unlocked Moto G (2014)

Forget the soak tests, owners of the unlocked 2nd Gen. Moto G (2014) are seeing their Android 5.0 Lollipop updates now.

Despite all of the previous soak tests and other manufacturers making big claims to beat everyone else to market, Motorola did what they do best, quickly and silently push out their near stock version of Android to their awesome, although mid-range phone, the 5-inch Moto G.

The update so far appears to be for the unlocked U.S. variant of the device, but we suspect it will expand out to the remainder of 2nd Gen. Moto G versions in short order.

One of the biggest aspects to this release is not so much that this great budget-minded phone is receiving the Android 5.0 Lollipop update, but rather that it appears to be the first phone to officially receive the update. We are investigating now the validity of Nexus 5 owners seeing the OTA, but we are not yet seeing the factory images listed with Google, despite coming across a leak of the 2012 Nexus 7 WiFi image a couple hours ago.

The latest and greatest from Google, the Nexus 6 phone and Nexus 9 tablet, are finding their way to consumers, slowly. Along with these devices, it was expected that nexus users would see the Android 5.0 Lollipop update by this time last week. That did not work out, and the update suggested that today, November 12th, was the new Lollipop release day. Of course, the Moto G is not a Nexus device. For that matter, Motorola is no longer even a Google company, leaving a few people a little upset that Motorola has done so well with this release.

If you’ve got that $179 brand new unlocked 2nd Gen. Motorola Moto G (2014) kicking around, you may want to head into settings and check for updates, today may just be your lucky day.

Do you think it is inappropriate for Google to allow other manufacturers to get Android 5.0 Lollipop on their devices before pushing the update to Nexus owners?