The default behavior of Gradle to pick the newest version also applies if a lower version has been declared locally, but another dependency transitively pulls in a newer version. This is in contrast with Maven, where a locally declared version will always win.
For example, if your build.gradle specifies the dependency org.springframework:spring-tx:3.2.3.RELEASE, and another dependency declares 4.0.5.RELEASE as a transitive dependency, then 4.0.5.RELEASE will take precedence:
dependencies {
compile("org.springframework.data:spring-data-hadoop:2.0.0.RELEASE")
compile("org.springframework:spring-tx:3.2.3.RELEASE")
// will select org.springframework:spring-tx:4.0.5.RELEASE