Other changes include improvements to the notifications, which can be accessed from the lockscreen and displayed within applications as top-of-the-screen banners.

Google also made internal changes to the platform, with the Android Runtime (ART) officially replacing Dalvik for improved application performance, and with changes intended to improve and optimize battery usage.

The Roboto font, which was originally made for Android Ice Cream Sandwich, was redesigned in favor of Material Design.

Expanding upon the "card" motifs first seen in Google Now, it is a design with increased use of grid-based layouts, responsive animations and transitions, padding, and depth effects such as lighting and shadows.

Designer Matías Duarte explained that "unlike real paper, our digital material can expand and reform intelligently.

The material design language would not only be used on Android, but across Google's suite of web software as well, providing a consistent experience across all platforms.

Individual apps can also display multiple cards in the recents menu, such as for a web browser's open tabs.

[20] Lollipop also aimed to improve battery consumption through a series of optimizations known as "Project Volta".

The Samsung Knox security framework was initially planned to be used as a foundation for "Android for Work", but instead Google opted to use its own technology for segregating personal and work-oriented data on a device, along with the accompanying APIs for managing the environment.

[27][28] A second developer preview build, LPV81C, was released on August 7, 2014, alongside the beta version of the Google Fit platform and SDK.

[31][32] The full source code of Android 5.0 was pushed to AOSP on November 3, 2014, allowing developers and OEMs to begin producing their own builds of the operating system.