Last fall in the lead up to the release of Android Lollipop, Google let it out that they were planning to enable encryption of storage by default on new devices. This was going to be a change from previous versions of the Android operating system which had the capability of encrypting storage space, but left it up to the user to enable the encryption. As several new devices are starting to finally come to market loaded with Android Lollipop out of the box, Google has apparently decided not to make encryption the default, at least not for their partners manufacturing mobile devices.
When Google first announced plans to make encryption the default, they said it would only apply to new devices. Older devices that were upgraded to Lollipop would not be forced to enable encryption by default as part of the upgrade process. This was apparently done in consideration of potential hardware limitations for devices not designed with encryption in mind.
During the last few months of 2014 and in to 2015, this position appeared to hold. Only the Nexus 6 and Nexus 9 were released to market and they did indeed have encryption turned on by default. Meanwhile, the small number of devices that received the Lollipop update left the decision about encryption up to the user, but it was off by default.
However, the recently released Motorola Moto E (2015) does not have encryption turned on out of the box and sources at MWC 2015 who have gotten their hands on the Samsung Galaxy S6 demo units say encryption is not turned on for those devices either.
Google has not issued any statement about why their position regarding default encryption changed or is at least being delayed. It could be the performance hit is still a concern, even on new hardware, especially after Google’s own Nexus 6 performance was hurt by encryption. It seems hard to imagine a device like the Galaxy S6 would suffer a noticeable performance hit from disk encryption.
For the present time at least, Google’s guidelines for OEMs only indicates that disk encryption should be turned on by default and Google strongly recommends this. However, it is not mandated.
source: Ars Technica
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