Android’s VP of engineering, Hiroshi Lockheimer likes to tease things about the next version of Android and he’s back at it again. This time he is teasing that the next version of Android could be Oreo. Now since the major versions of Android do go in alphabetical order and the previous one was N for Nougat, it is basically confirmed that it will be Android O, but it’s unclear what the official name will be. And it likely won’t be made official until the end of the Summer. All of this got started when Lockheimer tweeted The Verge’s Dan Seifert with a gif of Oreo’s.
It’s important to note that just because Lockheimer is teasing what Android O could be, that doesn’t mean it is confirmed. Lockheimer has done this before, in fact pretty recently with Android N, teasing that it could be Nutella. Of course it ended up being Nougat, as we all know now. This is just a way for Google to start drumming up some hype around this new version of Android, which should be seeing its first developer preview after Mobile World Congress, if Google keeps up with the same schedule they used for Android N.
It’s quite possible that the next version of Android will still be named after a dessert. After all, Google has been doing this since Android Cupcake, which was version 1.5 (Google says that A and B were “Alpha” and “Beta” respectively, so they didn’t start using desserts until C came around). We’ve had some interesting desserts come out for Android over the years. Perhaps the most interesting was the one for Android 4.4, KitKat. Many people were expecting Key Lime Pie, but Google ended up striking a marketing deal with Nestle to use KitKat. Of course, that’s the only marketing deal they’ve done for a version of Android so far, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be the last one. So Lockheimer will continue to tease what Android O might be and the Internet will continue to speculate what it will officially be called. But don’t expect anything official until around July or August of this year.