Thinking back to the past few years with Android OS updates, I don’t recall there being nearly this much acceptance and adoption by manufacturers in such a short amount of time. I mean, sure, many of the big manufacturers came out with announcements that certain devices would get updates eventually. Beyond the Nexus line of devices though, I can’t personally recall actual updates heading out to devices with-in weeks of the source code being officially available. Yesterday we caught word from Motorola that the 2nd Gen versions of the Moto X and Moto G are already starting to get Android 5.0 Lollipop update roll outs. In a few short days we can add the NVIDIA Shield Tablet to the growing list of quick to release manufacturer updates as they have announced this morning that Android 5.0 Lollipop will be making its way out on November 18th.
The Android 5.0 Lollipop update might be the big news in terms of speed from release to update time-line, but NVIDIA has quite a bit more news to announce along with the update. The GRID gaming service is another pretty sweet treat mixed in with the update, think Netflix for gaming on the Shield. The GRID service will be free to Shield Tablet and Shield Portable owners from the time of update through July 30th of 2015. The GRID Hub and service has been in development for over a decade and will finally be making a its public beta release on November 18th as well.  The GRID hub already has access to 20 AAA titles like Batman: Arkham City, Borderlands 2 and Psychonauts with new games being added every week.
If the GRID doesn’t give you enough oomph to love the Shield Tablet, NVIDIA also has the Green Box bundle on the way that 32GB/LTE Shield Tablet owners will get for free. That package brings in Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2 and Portal.
Finally, there are four new Shield optimized games that will also be released: OddWorld: Stranger’s Wrath, Pure Pool, Strike Suite Zero and Turbo Dismount.
Source: NVIDIA Blog
