You know how all the bigtime Android iterations are named after desserts? Do you also see how the titles of these deserts have been released in alphabetical order? These Android titles go like so: Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, and Honeycomb. This last version is the first tablet-specific version of Android and should, based on what we know at the moment, be considered as being developed aside from the main Android bloodline. That said, the next version’s name has been “leaked” by a Google developer by the name of Romain Guy: Ice Cream Sandwich.
See, I TOLD YOU man, I TOLD YOU. Actually Andy Rubin told you (sort of) back in January of this year in a conversation with Jason Kincaid. Have a look at that old post and continue on to the following: a code issue inside the subject of Gradients in Honeycomb. In this short and sweet conversation, official Android worker Romain Guy notes the following: “A bug fix will be provided in Ice Cream Sandwich.”
This changes everything! Actually it doesn’t really change anything, but it’s fun to know that the version of Android that will make some big strides to combine both versions of Android now has a sandwichy name. As Eric Schmidt said back at Mobile World Congress 2011: “We have OS called gingerbread for phones, we have an OS being previewed now for tablets called Honeycomb. The two of them… you can imagine the follow up will start with an I, be named after dessert, and will combine these two.”
Tasty enough? Totally tasty. Then of course there’s the most empirical evidence of all: if there were to be a giant Froyo sculpture out in front of the Googleplex and there were to be a giant dish of Ice Cream, there would be some confusion. If the Ice Cream is a big sandwich instead, all of that confusion just melts away like the tasty, tasty treat it is. ALSO, the hero image in this post comes from Google circa 2006. Still yummy.
[via TIMN]
I’m wondering if they are going to be serving Android Shaped Ice Cream Sandwiches at Google I/O 2011. Yummy!
They had smoothies at the Google Pod at Mobile World Congress flavored like all the versions – I had Gingerbread. Blech! But the idea was nice! I heard froyo was better.
At least Android version names sound fun. Window Phone 7 has lame names like Mango and NoDo. another level of fail…
Well NoDo was a knock on android in the first place.
Why does everyone think Ice Cream Sandwich will be version 2.4/5? If it is a merger of 2.3 and 3.0, why would they down grade the version on tablets? You don’t go down in version numbers.
“We will be upgrading the Motorola Xoom from version 3.0 to version 2.4” – that doesn’t make any sense at all. The only way it would make any sense is if they left it strictly a phone OS instead of merging the 2.
I think that is what they’re getting at.
The phones are going to get Honeycomb esq features.
Apple employees get hanged for these kinds of slips. Yet another reason why Apple is superior.
Google employees “slip” information like this in a calculated manner so that blogs like us will get the information first, creating an overall stronger community instead of an employee murdering organization.
That sandwich in the picture looks totally delicious…lunchtime can’t come soon enough!
What I will wait for is this: A phone/dock combining the atrix concept and Asus type tablet slider concept and the phone gets docked flat into it as the trackpad, rather than sticking up in the back. The brains would be completely in the phone, but would switch to a tablet/laptop mode like what the atrix does, but would be like honeycomb interface instead. This would require 3.1 Ice cream which is supposed to support both 2.x and 3.0 UI modes combined. This would be the holy grail for android devices as far as I am concerned, as it could be used as phone, netbook, tablet.