LG announced on Sunday that it will kick off its Android Lollipop rollout for G3 from "this week," starting with Poland and followed by "other key markets in the near future".
The rapid update from LG, the former maker of Google's Nexus smartphones, marks a departure from its handling of previous Android releases. It's traditionally been slower than Motorola and HTC, having taken at least three months to bring KitKat to the G2.
LG plans to announce an upgrade schedule for its other devices at a later date.
The update from LG will likely put it ahead of Motorola as the first and fastest to deliver Android this time around.
Owners of the Moto X 2014 model who had signed up for Motorola's 'soak test' - which offers fans early access to test out new software in exchange for feedback - may have been the first to receive Android Lollipop.
As Ars Technica reported on Friday, some owners of the unlocked Moto X 2014 Pure Edition had reported getting the Lollipop prompts. Motorola had also published the release notes for Moto X and Moto G updates, revealing what owners of the device could expect and when.
But just as excitement over the update grew, Motorola yanked its release notes as did users who had earlier posted screenshots of the update prompts.
Android Police, however, managed to capture the release notes, which detail what's in store for owners of the second generation Moto X. The notes give a rundown of key Android Lollipop features including Material Design, a notifications overhaul, new interruption and downtime settings, and Android's new way of handling 'Recents' that includes cards for both applications and their separate activities. The update also offers Android's ambient display, which surfaces some notifications when the display is off and partly duplicates an existing Moto X feature. Other Lollipop features include flashlight in quick settings, multiple user accounts, screen pinning, more detailed battery usage information and power-savings mode, the Android runtime, trusted device smart lock, and a move to a stronger 256-bit encryption key post factory reset.
There's no official word yet from Motorola as to what happened to its soak test and whether it will resume. ZDNet has asked Motorola for comment and will update the story if it receives a response.
For now though, the new Nexus 9 tablet, which shipped with Android 5.0, remains the only device officially running the OS since Google first announced the update on November 3.
According to a report last week, the update for other Nexus devices may start on November 12, with Google having already fixed a wi-fi bug in the OS that caused Nexus 5 battery drain.
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