Verizon's Samsung Galaxy S5 is now receiving Android 5.0

Surprising everyone, Verizon has today unveiled that it's the first US carrier to push the update to Android 5.0 Lollipop to the Samsung Galaxy S5. This smartphone has so far been updated to Lollipop in other parts of the world, and now the new software finally makes it to the US. Furthermore, it makes its debut at a carrier that really isn't known for swiftly releasing such updates.

The update seems to already be rolling out over-the-air to all Galaxy S5 units sold by Verizon. If your phone hasn't notified you about it yet, then it should do so within the next few hours or days. If you're running low on patience, you can manually check for the update from the Settings menu.

It looks like you'll first get a smaller update which will prepare your handset for the bigger one, which should follow immediately after the first one is installed. The Lollipop build is LRX21T.G900VVRU1BNLC.

As you might have expected, this means you'll get Material Design on your Galaxy S5, as well as a slightly improved iteraton of TouchWiz, Samsung's UI overlay. The new Recents menu is in too, as is the Interruptions feature that replaces Silent mode. The colors are bolder all-round, and the whole experience should be smoother thanks to the use of the new Android RunTime (ART) instead of the old Dalvik virtual machine.

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