Business Week claims to have a source saying that due to OEM partners complaining about not being able to have the latest version of Android on their flagship devices during the holiday period, with only the latest Nexus devices running it, Google supposedly has plans to unveil a new version tomorrow at Google I/O.
This would be in stark contrast to their last release, Android 4.4 Kit Kat, where the turn around between announcement and release was only a few weeks. This should give manufacturers time to provide updates for their old phones and phones in development allowing for more timely updates, often an issue many owners have complained about.
The update itself, the ‘L’ update, is obviously named Lollipop. It is not currently known whether it will take the form of 4.5 or 5.0 and will supposedly feature a major UI redesign, code-named Moonshine. The last major Android update that Google released was 4.4 Kit Kat, in November, with 4.4.3 and 4.4.4 starting to roll out in the last two weeks for Nexus devices. When ‘Lollipop‘ does release, expect it to roll out to Nexus devices, followed by Motorola devices with other OEMs following in the months after.
Google I/O starts tomorrow with multiple live streams. The main keynote will begin at 5:00 PM GMT. This has been the only major leak so far, but we would expect to see updates on various Google projects such as Android Wear and perhaps Glass. However, a significant update pertaining to Glass is not expected as they revealed earlier today in a relatively minor hardware upgrade and a new OS update. Google also announced a UK release yesterday.
Are you excited for I/O? What do you want to see from Google? And depending on the device you have, do you think you’ll get this new Android update? Should it be revealed?
