To add to its buffet of mobile operating system updates, Google is likely to introduce its latest Android update this summer: Ice Cream.
The blog Pocket-lint cites "multiple sources" in a post proclaiming the arrival of Android 2.4 in June or July, with an announcement expected at the company’s annual IO conference May 19-20 in San Francisco.
Other blogs, such as Phandroid, whose writers observed the Sony Ericcson Xperia Arc smart phone running a 2.4 version of Android at last week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, also quickly picked up the scoop and ran with it.
Quick to cover up the premature exposure, Sony Ericcson told Pocket-lint that there was a "software corruption issue on the device" and that noooo, it wasn't running that yet-to-be released Android update!
But Pocket-lint is sticking to its guns. "Our sources have confirmed that the new OS is coming, and coming in the not-too-distant future."
Android, which has released updates with alpha-ordered names that conjure up all kinds of late-night munchies — such as Donut (version 1.6), Eclair (2.0), Froyo (2.2), Gingerbread (2.3) and most recently, Honeycomb (3.0) — is timing its releases to about two a year, so the release of the scrumptiously summer-themed Ice Cream seems to fit its timeline.
The operating system's fracturing has been covered by MSNBC.com's M. Alex Johnson, who recently wrote about the different versions and how they correspond with tablets and/or smart phones. It's a mess, with early adopters basically screwed with systems that can't be upgraded because of fragmentation as different devices from so many different manufacturers have no coordinated plan for syncing updates with devices. Most Android phones are running on Froyo, so maybe Ice Cream will fatten up features for buyers who wait for that version to come up.
But maybe there's some light shining through. For instance, Honeycomb is dedicated to tablets, like the hot, hot, hot, Motorola Xoom, which our own Wilson Rothman thinks could be an iPad killer.
So it's with some anticipation that folks are looking forward to Ice Cream, and hoping that it's an update that stays intact and not one that melts all over the sidewalk before you can sink your teeth into it.
