Google’s latest I/O event is literally here. It is only a matter of hours now until the event takes place and all that Google has in store for everyone over the next twelve months will be revealed. That said, even with the event at our doorstep and waiting to begin, that has not stopped the speculation and rumors continuing. Only this morning came the news that analysts are predicting that the rumored Android Pay which is now expected to be announced at the event, will be a big headline aspect of the event and likely to make real impact on the android world.
Well, another highly rumored aspect of this year’s event is the latest evolution of the android operating system, which comes in the form of the next updated version, currently known as Android M. As soon as the schedule for this year’s I/O event became live, it was immediately noticed that Android M was referenced in a brief description of one of the workshops around Android for Work. This also immediately resulted in massive speculation that Google will unveil Android M at this year’s event. Almost as immediately as the speculation took effect, the page detailing the Android M reference was pulled again. Since then, the rumors around what M will introduced have been continuing. If there was any doubt as to whether Google would unveil M this week, it seems the most concrete confirmation has now come from Google’s VP of Engineering, Hiroshi Lockheimer, in an interview given to Fast Company (source link below).
During the interview, Lockheimer all but confirmed that the release of Android M is likely to take place over the next few days. In fact, Lockheimer confirmation came by noting how the general industry seems to now expect the yearly release of an android update “So we’ve landed with sort of a yearly cadence of big releases, so, for instance, one year we release J, the next year we release K, and then the year after that L, and then this year we’ll launch M”. Lockheimer then goes on to pretty much confirm Android N will likely land next year “and so you can predict what will happen next year.” In fact, Lockheimer even noted that this this yearly update has its benefits, by offering the industry a form of predictability about android “As we’ve grown as a platform, we realize that to some extent predictability is important for the whole industry: developers, manufacturers, operators, and consumers, frankly.” In addition to confirming the likelihood of Android M being released, Lockheimer also talked about how the various forms of android that are being released for different devices should not be thought of as different, but instead, they should be thought of more holistically, more of “acommon platform“. You can read the full details of the interview by clicking the source link below.