Sept 29, 2015: Android 6.0 Marshmallow – Official Announcement of all features (Nexus Event 2015) – GIGA TECH in 8 minutes
Oct 6, 2015: The Top 3 new features highlighted for the Android 6.0 Marshmallow on the android.com/history
Now On Tap
Get assistance without having to leave what you’re doing—whether you’re in an app or on a website. Just tap and hold the home button.
Permissions
Define what you want to share with apps on your device and when. Turn permissions off at any time, too.
Battery
Enjoy a battery that works smarter, not garder. Marshmallow optimizes your juice for what matters most with features like Doze and App Standby.
Sept 29, 2015: All Features of Android 6.0 Marshmallow from the official Android – Marshmallow page
All about Android 6.0, Marshmallow
Contextual Assistance
Now on Tap: get assistance without having to leave what you’re doing—whether you’re in an app or on a website. Just touch and hold the home button.
Do more with your voice. Now you can have a dialogue with any of your apps that support the new voice interaction service. For example, if a user says “play some music on TuneIn,” TuneIn will respond by asking “What genre?”.
Direct Share: a fast and easy way to share to the right person in the right app.
Battery
Doze: when your device is at rest, Doze automatically puts it into a sleep state to increase your standby battery life.
App Standby: no more battery drain from seldom used apps; App Standby limits their impact on battery life so your charge lasts longer.
USB Type C support*: Quickly transfer power and data all through the same cable. Lightning fast charging gives you hours of power in just minutes.
Privacy & Security
On an Android Marshmallow device, apps designed for Android Marshmallow only ask for permission right when it’s needed. You can deny any permission and still continue to use the app.
Advanced controls to turn permissions on or off for all your installed apps.
Verified boot: when your Android device boots up, it will warn you if the firmware and Android operating system have been modified from the factory version.
Use fingerprint sensors* to unlock your device, make purchases in Google Play, authenticate transactions in apps, and pay in stores.
Android Runtime (“ART”)
Improved application performance and lower memory overhead for faster multi-tasking.
Productivity
Bluetooth™ stylus support*, including pressure sensitivity and modifier keys.
Improved typesetting and text rendering performance.
Smarter text selection, built-in undo/redo, and text actions closer to your fingers.
Text selection actions such as a new Translate option that lets you translate text from one language to another right on the spot. (Note: requires Google Translate app installed)
Save paper with duplex printing support.
System usability improvements
App links: enables installed apps to automatically handle their web URLs so you can jump right into the app, rather than the mobile web site, as appropriate.
Easily toggle and configure Do Not Disturb from quick settings.
If someone calls you twice within 15 minutes, you can choose to allow the call to ring through while Do Not Disturb is enabled.
Use automatic rules to enable Do Not Disturb for as many custom time blocks as you like or around events on your calendar.
Simplified volume controls allow you to manage notification, music, and alarm volumes easily from anywhere with the touch of your volume keys.
Streamlined Settings let you manage an app’s settings all in one place, from battery and memory usage, to notifications and permissions controls.
Google Now Launcher app list refreshed with search, fast alphabetic scrolling, and predictive App Suggestions.
Connectivity
More power efficient Bluetooth Low Energy (“BLE”) scanning for nearby beacons and your accessories.
Hotspot 2.0: Connect to compatible Wi-Fi networks seamlessly and securely.
Bluetooth SAP: Make calls from your carphone using your phone’s SIM.
Portable Wi-Fi hotspot now supports 5GHz frequency bands.
Expandable storage
Flex Storage: makes using SD cards or external storage devices as encrypted expanded storage for your apps and games on Android Marshmallow a whole lot easier.
Device setup and migration
Easily transfer your accounts, apps and data to a new device.
During setup, you can add an additional personal or corporate email account (e.g., IMAP)
Auto backup for Apps: seamless app data backup and restore.
Backup/restore of additional system settings such as your Sync settings, preferred apps, Do Not Disturb settings, Accessibility settings and enabled IMEs.
Media
MIDI support: create, consume, and perform music using your Android device with USB MIDI devices, MIDI over BLE, and software-based MIDI devices.
Internationalization
Android is now available in 74+ languages with 6 new additions: Azerbaijani, Gujarati, Kazakh, Albanian, Urdu, and Uzbek.
Android for Work
When receiving calls or viewing past messages, you can now see the full work contact details even if you’re not logged into your work profile.
Work status notification: A status bar briefcase icon now appears when you’re using an app from the work profile and if the device is unlocked directly to an app in the work profile, an alert is displayed notifying the user.
VPN apps are now visible in Settings > More > VPN. Additionally, the notifications that VPNs use are now specific to whether that VPN is configured for a work profile or the entire device.
*dependent on hardware compatibility
Sept 29, 2015: A developer’s overview of Android 6.0 Marshmallow by Android Developers
Sept 29, 2015: Android 6.0 Marshmallow based lead devices information from S’more to love across all your screens from the Official Google Blog
New Nexus phones
We made Android to be an open platform that anyone can build on, and today there are 4,000+ Android devices in all shapes and sizes. Android’s diversity is why it’s become the most popular mobile platform in the world, and the latest version, Marshmallow, takes Android to a new level of performance.
While we love all the Android devices out there, every year we build Nexus devices to show off the latest and greatest, directly from the people who built Android. Today we’re introducing the latest Nexus treats, both running Marshmallow, sweetened by amazing apps and sandwiched by some cutting-edge hardware (see what we did there?):
Nexus 6P is the first all-metal-body Nexus phone. Built in collaboration with Huawei, this 5.7” phone is crafted from aeronautical-grade aluminum, with a USB Type-C port for fast charging, a powerful 64-bit processor, and a 12.3 MP camera sensor with massive 1.55µm pixels (hello, better photos!). The Nexus 6P starts at $499.
You’re not the only one who misses your Nexus 5. We’ve joined forces with LG to bring it back with the new Nexus 5X, which gives you great performance in a compact and light package, with a beautiful 5.2” screen and the same 12.3 MP camera and Type-C port as the Nexus 6P. Nexus 5X starts at $379.
Both phones include a new fingerprint sensor, Nexus Imprint, which gives you quick and secure access to your phone, as well as use of Android Pay (in the U.S.). They are available for pre-order on the Google Store from a number of countries, including the U.S., U.K., Ireland and Japan, and come with a free 90-day subscription to Google Play Music. In the U.S., pre-orders include a $50 Play credit to help you stock up your favorite music, apps, games and shows. And, finally, for you Project Fi fans out there, you’ll be happy to know Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X will work on your favorite network. Request an invite to our Early Access Program at fi.google.com. 
Oct 5, 2015: Official Android 6.0 Marshmallow Review by Tim Schofield
Oct 15, 2015: Answer to the question “Will Xiaomi finally step to the conventional way of upgrading to Android?” put to Hugo Barra in Hangout with Mi – Episode 2 from Xiaomi India
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The official release of Android M has just happened. That means that people like us only now have been given what they need to be able to start the porting process. Of course Google has been working with M for the new Nexus devices for a while. That’s exactly the reason why Nexus exists. So we’ve just started the porting work, and it takes some time to make sure that it all super well optimised.
By the way I should mention, if you look a little bit about the process for doing an upgrade. It’s not like just get some code from Google, like start moving into our code base. Actually it’s at least a two-step process. In fact I would argue that it’s a three-step process.
The first thing to happen is: Whoever makes the chipset, the SoC that powers that particular phone. Maybe let’s talk about Mi4i. Mi4i is on Qualcomm MSM8939, Snapdragon 615 v2 [rather Snapdragon 616 MSM8939v2, see Snapdragon 616 on Qualcomm site], it means it’s powered by Qualcomm. So Google Android team provides the build to Qualcomm. Qualcomm—beginning of now, just like happened—then will take a few months to do the work of making sure that the kernel level stuff is optimised, and correctly able to support then the layers above, the BSP [?Board Support Package?] framework, the so one and so forth.
Then Qualcomm takes that codebase, let’s assume it will be ready in January—to give you a hypothetical date here—and then provide that to the different smartphone brands like Xiaomi for example. Then our BSP team, which stands for basement processor—it’s the low level part of the operating system that includes everything under the framework—they will take that codebase from Qualcomm and then putting the extra work [needed to ensure] that it’s very optimised for battery consumption, for performance, so on and so forth, for Mi4i. They have to do the same work for every other device.
Then the System UI team—concerning that most OEMs have done some amount of System UI work—has to do a little bit of work of optimisation obviously to make sure that all the features are there.
At least these 3 steps that have to be taken by not only Xiomi, but every OEM to be able to bring devices to a new version of the operating system. Make sure that it’s optimised. It’ll be unacceptable for us to launch Android M on Mi4i in a way that doesn’t perform at least as well, if not obviously, ideally better, then it performed on [Android 5.0] Lollipop. So it’s like quite a long process.
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Filed under: Cloud client SW platforms, consumer computing, consumer devices Tagged: Android, Android 6.0, Android 6.0 Marshmallow, Android M, Android optimization, BSP, Hugo Barra, Mi4i, MSM8939, MSM8939 v2, OEM optimization, OEMs, Qualcomm, Snapdragon 615, Snapdragon 615 v2, Snapdragon 616, SoC vendor optimization, System UI, Xiaomi 
