The odds are pretty good that if you're using a still-supported Nexus device, it's probably running August's security update by now. The factory images became available on Monday of last week and OTAs have been intermittently rolling out since then. The push to AOSP took a little longer and finally included a couple of other tags that were behind schedule. All of the changes have been compiled into their respective lists and the changelogs are ready for perusal.

Google's Android Security Bulletin details the potential vulnerabilities addressed by the August updates, but it's not too rare to see other small bug fixes and adjustments hidden among the changes.

There are a couple of unexpected additions to the list of changelogs this month. The most curious one is actually for Lollipop, and even stranger is that it's intended for the Nexus 10. Near the end of July, build number LMY49M appeared with the tag android-5.1.1_r38. The build number doesn't currently appear on the Nexus Factory Images page or any related distributions (i.e. OTAs and proprietary binaries), but it is in the official list of build numbers for all Nexus devices, where the Nexus 10 is specifically identified as the recipient for that version. Given that the 'J' build released in April was the last to officially support the Nexus 10, it's interesting to see a later build show up now, and it may be of some value to ROM builders if newer binaries are also available. Still, it's only a Lollipop update, so it's not likely to make much of a difference since there are already third-party Marshmallow builds available for the Nexus 10.

For those building software to integrate with Android for Work, there's a "test harness" project that may be useful or interesting. The tag is named afw-test-harness-1.5 and it's based on android-6.0.0_r6.

Are you reading the changelogs? There are a lot of questions and confusion surrounding changelogs, so here are a few reminders and tips that might answer a few of those issues and hopefully clear some things up. To begin with, all changelogs are named with their starting and ending tags. That's because changelogs pick up where previous changelogs left off, but the names and numbers aren't necessarily sequential. For example, 6.0.1_r56 is based on r48, not on r55. Changelogs always build off of another changelog, sometimes even in the same month. Also remember that while most patches are only written once, multiple development branches are running in parallel, so a single patch may be listed in more than one changelog, but usually only once per device. Also remember that these changelogs only list changes uploaded to the Android Open Source Project. They do not include changes made to the closed source proprietary binaries used to build the final firmware for a device. Sometimes a new tag and build number are created for updates where only those binaries have been changed, which usually results in a changelog where only a build number has been incremented. Finally, changelogs for developer previews contain only a short list of changes. This is because Google does not post the full code for a new version of Android until the OS is final. Most of the code disclosed prior to a final OS release is usually for compliance with the GPL or similarly licensed projects, or belonging to projects Google itself chooses to make available in advance.

Quick note about the Wear developer previews: The first developer preview for Android Wear running N (android-wear-n-preview-1) came out at the same time as the third developer preview (android-n-preview-3) for phones/tablets. The tag for DP3 points to the same place as the tag for Wear-DP1, so no changelog is posted for it. DP4 obviously came after that, then Wear-DP2, and finally DP5.

Nexus 10 update :

August security updates :

Android 7.0 Developer Previews :