Gadgetory

for some reason that we don't know and really don't care about google has been naming their Android versions after desserts from cupcake to donut all the way up through Ice Cream Sandwich and jelly bean so that begs the question what's next well they follow their alphabet scheme we're up to version k and what starts with the letter K pause for just a minute and think desserts the start with k there's a google search out there that you could do but let me just spoil it for you key lime pie that's probably what it's going to be called and there's some rumors coming out of google i/o that people at Google are already referring to the next version of android as key lime pie how about versions well Ice Cream Sandwich was a big step up from honeycomb I don't need to tell you that but it was a step from version 3 point something to version four point oh the latest version of ice cream sandwich is 4.0 point for the point four at the end being primarily bug fixes we were kind of disappointed to be frank when jellybean came out as version 4.1 not a huge step forward luckily what was included inside the operating system seems like a huge step forward even though the version numbering wasn't so again that begs the question what's the next version are we going to see version 4.2 maybe a jump to 4.5 or even a jump all the way up to 5 point oh I don't know I'd like to think that it's going to be a major jump up to version 5.000% 4.2 4.3 we might even skip something all the way up to 4.5 but it's going to be an incremental build that's my guess regardless if key lime pie is going to be a major version or a minor version what's going to be included in it well let's start with the no-brainer bug fixes we know that there are bugs in every version of every software that ever existed just kind of sad to think that we have some of those flying in space ships and satellites but I digress we're going to see bug fixes in the next version of android things that we don't know about now that will be discovered and fixed will be implemented either along the way as minor patches or all together in the next version of android and probably both so people that are running on jelly bean or ice cream sandwich now we'll be able to get the bug fixes in the interim but then all of us will be able to get them one version whatever we want to call it comes out in key lime pie so what else improvements now of course we've got UI improvements and we saw a major leap with UI improvements with jelly bean / Ice Cream Sandwich the UI itself really didn't change all that much we saw some additions with google search and what was it Google now Google today it's still too early to know what these things are called it's a joke for you guys who are paying attention but we're going to see a lot of these minor improvements to the UI the major improvements to how we experience the UI voice will be improved touch input will be improved the way we look at things on the screen will be improved so we're going to see these improvements that are behind the scenes that just make the entire Android experience that much better so what else are we going to get hardware never sleeps okay I know you can put into sleep mode and turn it off and stuff but follow with me okay you've got people that are spending their entire careers doing nothing more than figuring out what the next version of the processor is going to be how the next CPU is going to work how to cram more cores into a smaller space well this is marching ever onward so we're going to see course operating systems built to take advantage of all of the progression that we're seeing with hardware's so what kind of hardware support are we going to right now android runs pretty good could run better we need to get better 64-bit support or any 64-bit support then again we need hardware that supports that as well we need better multi core support honestly multithreading is great but we've got to find some way to do it better and not just better the OS level but better at the app level as well can they do that through the vm i hope so that way we won't have to have developers write code specifically to take advantage of a multi-core environment because the vm that the app runs within will just do it I know that's a lot of technical mumbo jumbo but it means faster when we talk about hardware we also have to talk about platforms or form factors and we already have smartphones we have tablets of course now we have a Google tablet we also have google TV which for some reason we didn't hear too much about at the keynotes Google i/o this time around and now we've got this weird funky ball thing the Nexus Q by the way Q is kind of a play on words / q q ue ue you know like a line because you can queue up that's a different video but we're seeing all these advancements and improvements in hardware platforms we need to make sure that the operating system plays nicely together and really does it seamlessly so we have a similar albeit not identical user experience between the different form factors and everything plays nicely together in fact plays not only seamlessly together but intuitively together that's something that the operating system is going to have to continue to evolve and polish as we go along so now we've talked hardware let's talk about apps now I know apps aren't an integral part of the operating system but the operating system exposes new AP is or allows you to do current AP is in a different way so that applications can take advantage of them they can look better they can be faster they can tie into new inputs new sensors new libraries so of course we're going to have apps that have to advantage of that as well we've seen that with Google Apps in fact literally minutes after jellybean was announced a good chunk of the google apps were updated to take advantage of some of the new stuff there does that mean that it doesn't work anymore in previous versions of course not but it means that if you've got an up level version of the operating system now you've got all these cool new advancements and features that you might not have in a previous version or the previous version might not look as nice or might not be as pretty google has been really really good setting an example of how they can do that and release a new version without sacrificing down level user experience and over time build in a lot of the same features and functionalities that the up level versions are getting into the down level versions of the operating system pretty much negating the whole Android is fragmented argument because they're handling that in the code in the apps themselves the OS is just a platform on which apps run anyway so that's my thoughts what about yours what do you think is going to be coming next in the next iteration of Android and do you think it's going to be called Android version key lime pie or is there some other k dessert that you think we might get maybe they'll get rid of the whole dessert naming scheme all together and just call it Android k like they did with the Nexus Q I don't know let us know in the comments down at pocketnow.com of course give the video a big thumbs up if you liked what you heard and of course share it with your friends and subscribe to the video channel so you don't miss out on our new and upcoming coverage for pocket now and the android guy weekly i'm joe levi when we talk about hardware little bit