The Google I/O keynote is over, but that doesn’t mean the rumors are. Yesterday we reported on some news coming from a Bluetooth SIG press release that Google has adopted BLE or Bluetooth Low Energy. Which means they’d have to send out an update to push that feature. It was believed by the Bluetooth SIG that Android 4.3 was going to be introduced yesterday. Perhaps it wasn’t quite ready?
There are also tweets coming out of a few sessions at Google I/O that Android API 18 will support Bluetooth Smart or Bluetooth Low Energy and it’ll be released in a couple of months. Whenever there’s a new API version, we get a new version of Android. For Example, API 17 is Android 4.2 – Jelly Bean. We’ve also seen Android 4.3 hitting our site and some other Android sites out there. We also saw Android 4.3 show up in search results yesterday morning that has now disappeared.
There’s also a rumor that Google will unveil their next generation Nexus 7 in July with this new version of Android. We were fully expecting a Nexus 7 to be announced yesterday. Digitimes is reporting about the Surface RT and Nexus 7 second generation tablets:
In addition to Surface [launching in June], Google is also set to start selling its second-generation Nexus 7 in July with a sales target of 6-8 million units for the second half. The upcoming Nexus 7 will feature Japan Display’s (JPI) 1920 by 1200 LTPS TFT panel and a Qualcomm processor, and be priced the same as the first-generation model.
It’s important to remember that Digitimes has been right as many times as they’ve been wrong. So who knows at this point. But I do have a strong feeling we’ll see a Qualcomm processor in there since the Tegra 4 is still really new and pretty costly.
So don’t be too sad about no new version of Android or a new Nexus 7. We still got plenty of cool things out of Google I/O. It’s also important to remember that I/O is a developer conference not a Hardware show for consumers. In the meantime, have fun with Hangouts, the new Google Music, the redesigned Google+ and everything else we got yesterday.