Android 7.0 update to hit Nvidia Shield Tablets in next few weeks

By Jon Martindale Published January 18, 2017

Nvidia has assured owners of the Shield Tablet that it will be updating them to Android Nougat, the 7.0 release of the operating system. This update will apply to both the Shield Tablet and Tablet K1, and follows an earlier update for the Shield TV set-top box.

Although Android is most often associated with smartphones and tablets, it’s an operating system that has found wide usage in a variety of products. From miniature games consoles to streaming devices, Android is a very commonplace OS, but that does mean that not all devices are running the absolute latest version at all times.

Recommended Videos

Nvidia’s Shield Tablets are still part of that pack. While the newly announced Shield will come with version 7.0 of Android, the Nougat update, as standard, older hardware has yet to see any form of update.

However, according to an official Nvidia spokesperson, that won’t be the case for much longer. In a thread where Shield Tablet users were hoping to find out about the status of any impending updates for the tablets, software QA Manual Guzman responded with an affirmative.

“Yes Android N is coming to the Nvidia Shield Tablet and Nvidia Shield Tablet K1,” he said in a forum post (via AndroidPolice). This was backed up by a statement on the company’s Google+ page which suggested the update would arrive in a few weeks time.

This news was received with much positivity by other posters, who were happy to see that Nvidia was continuing to support its older hardware standards, despite plans to release newer Shield devices. Some did wonder, though, whether this OS update might fix outstanding issues with battery life on some Shield Tablets.

Unfortunately there was no response to those concerns. Do any of you who own Shield Tablets have ongoing issues with battery life?

Topics

Evergreen writer

Jon Martindale is a freelance evergreen writer and occasional section coordinator, covering how to guides, best-of lists, and…

Computing

Outlook typing lag will finally get a fix from Microsoft

A Dell laptop connected to a hard drive on a couch.

If you use classic Outlook to handle your emails, then you're most likely familiar with the annoying bug that causes huge CPU spikes while typing. It can be difficult to finish emails when your system resources jump by as much as 50 percent (and increase power usage with it), but Microsoft has finally announced that a fix is on the way. The downside? It won't arrive until late May for most users, although some might see it in early or mid May if they're part of the beta program. Until then, there is a workaround.

Rolling classic Outlook back to version 2405 seems to fix the issue, but it comes with a not-insignificant tradeoff. Updates since version 2405 have patched several security flaws, so if you opt to go this route, be aware that it opens your system to vulnerabilities.

Computing

YouTube’s AI Overviews want to make search results smarter

YouTube App

YouTube is experimenting with a new AI feature that could change how people find videos. Here's the kicker: not everyone is going to love it.

The platform has started rolling out AI-generated video summaries directly in search results, but only for a limited group of YouTube Premium subscribers in the U.S. For now, the AI Overviews are focused on things like product recommendations and travel ideas. They're meant to give quick highlights from multiple videos without making users look at each item they're interested in.

Computing

OpenAI’s GPT-4 might be coming to an end. Here’s why that’s actually good news

OpenAI's new typeface OpenAI Sans

OpenAI has seen many changes in recent weeks, and more are quickly coming. The AI company has yet to confirm the launch of its upcoming GPT-5 AI model. However, it is making room for its planned model by ending support for other models in its lineup. OpenAI recently announced that it is retiring its GPT-4 AI model as of April 30. GPT-4 stood as one of the brand’s most popular and longest-running large language models. However, the company has already shifted its focus away from its original large language model technology and more toward its series of reasoning models and other technologies in recent months.

The brand has also made some interesting moves by introducing a new GPT 4.1 model family, strictly as an API for developers, while simultaneously indicating plans to sunset the recently launched GPT-4.5 model and also releasing the o3 and o4 reasoning models. While not yet confirmed, these moves appear to propel the GPT-5 timeline closer to launch.