Google has officially launched the landing page for registration to their upcoming Google I/O developer event. Now that we have all the facts on when and where, people will begin to discuss what we can expect this year from Google. Last year, there was plenty of great announcements including Google Music, Movies for Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, Android@Home, and Chromebooks.

So what do we think Google has in store for us this year? Well, we have our money on the unveiling of the new Jelly Bean OS, more Android@Home goodies, a possible Nexus tablet created by ASUS, and of course, more additions to the brand new Google Play Store. Let us know down below on what you are hoping for the most and if you think Google will have a trick up their sleeve for this year. Either way, it’s going to be an awesome event as always.

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Before we start, let’s get one thing straight – we don’t even know that Jelly Bean is officially official yet for the version of Android to follow Ice Cream Sandwich. Google hasn’t called it that nor have we seen it appear on a device with that as the name. The chances of it ending up as Jelly Bean are probably pretty high, but again, we probably won’t know for sure until Google I/O in June. With that said, this weekend, a report from the folks at The Verge surfaced suggesting that “Key Lime Pie” will follow Jelly Bean in the Android naming scheme.

The only thing I can think to say about this, is how silly it is that we are talking about it. And I say “silly” because Google is releasing major updates to Android on an almost yearly basis these days, with the next big one (probably Jelly Bean) likely not arriving until the end of this year. Key Lime Pie would then be its follow-up in 2013, meaning we may be 2 years away from ever seeing a hint at it. The naming convention for Android is part of the fun though, so we’ll continue to talk about possibilities.

Personally, I liked Kugel. Other suggestions or is Key Lime Pie your favorite?

Via:  The Verge

Cheers Nadeem and Alex!

If you follow Droid Life on Twitter, then you may have joined in on our conversation over the last hour that had to do with OEMs that provide the fastest updates to the newest version of Android. Asus always comes to mind as one of the fastest, as they released Ice Cream Sandwich to a tablet long before anyone else in the business and continue to provide bug fixers on a regular basis. According to Benson Lin, Asus’ Corporate Vice President, their close relationship with Google is to thank for such timely updates. That relationship may also allow them to update to Android 5.0 first, or as Lin called it, “Jelly Bean.”

“Asus is very close to Google, so once they have Android 5.0 I think there will be a high possibility that we will be the first wave to offer the Jelly Bean update.”

Their track record speaks for itself. And while some can see that Asus seems to issue bug fixes so often because they rush to be the first out of the gate, I think most of us would accept this approach over waiting 6 months for an update that still has bugs.

Via:  TechRadar, DroidDog

At MWC this week, Hiroshi Lockheimer who is Google’s VP of engineering for mobile, mentioned to ComputerWorld that the next iteration of Android will indeed be 5.0. Previous rumors (and anyone with a brain) had guessed that 5.0 would be up next, but to hear a Google exec mention it just about seals the deal:

“After Android 4 comes 5, and we haven’t announced the timing yet, which we’re still sorting out,” Lockheimer said. “There’s a lot of engineering work behind it still, and there’s also just the question of how to time it.”

He then went on to discuss timing further, reminding everyone that they try to release the next major version of Android once per year, and then a bunch of decent sized updates throughout:

Lockheimer added: “In general, the Android release cadence is one major release a year with some maintenance releases that are substantial still.”

If we go off of past release schedules for both Gingerbread and Ice Cream Sandwich, that would mean we will likely see 5.0 in the Fall. A name, however, was not brought up. Jelly Bean is the leading candidate amongst bloggers with opinions, but we all know that could change over the next few months. After all, Android 4.0 is still hot out of the oven.

Via:  ComputerWorld

Cheers barski and jbart!

The Android booth at Mobile World Congress 2012 is now open to attendees. If you are in Barcelona this week, this is your new playground. With its smoothie bar, lounge, demo setups, device carousel, crane machine, looping slide, pin collections, Jelly Bean bowl (we’ll get to that later) and device bedazzler, it’s safe to say that the Android team has officially outdone itself. Do attendees even need to stop anywhere else?

Check out the gallery of the entire booth after the break, all thanks to Hugo Barra.  

Another upcoming patent application submitted by Google has been broken down in detail by Patently Apple. The newest submission is a gesture-based search feature that is reported to launch on upcoming devices. Basically, you draw a letter which equals a command, then circle the content which you want the command to base its process on in a single motion. So draw a “G” then circle a word or picture and it will show the Google results for that content.

You can draw different gestures/letters to mean different things. For example, in the picture below, you can draw a “W” which would represent searching something on Wikipedia. You can do this for many different types of commands and we’re thinking that the gestures won’t be limited to just letters, but any gesture you may want to use. 

This one is a doozy. According to famed rumor starter DigiTimes, we could see the launch of Android 5.0 (Jelly Bean) by Q2 of this year. Oh, and this latest version of Android will also allow dual-booting of operating systems so that vendors can toss on Chrome or Windows 8 or some other OS that you can dream up. It will also be optimized for tablets, as if Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich were not. And lastly, Google’s downstream partners were not all that thrilled with the performance from ICS, so they are now skeptical about Jelly Bean.

Good lord, where do we even begin? Dual-booting capabilities with Chrome integration?  Someone find me a manufacturer that is willing to build a tablet that can dual-boot Windows 8 and Android. The idea that bits and pieces of Chrome OS could find their way into Android just seems like a no-brainer, but I highly doubt that Samsung is going to line up to create the ultimate dual-OS tablet. Maybe that’s just me though.

Second, how can partners of Google’s even know how Ice Cream Sandwich is going to play out? Talking about a lackluster performance for a version of Android that is on all of 5 or 6 devices? We aren’t even shipping phones with ICS yet, but reports claim that people aren’t happy with it? Come on now.

And third, we don’t even know that the next version of Android is going to be Jelly Bean or Android 5.0, and we highly doubt that Google is going to release it in Q2 after barely getting ICS out of the gate. By that time, companies like Motorola and HTC will just be getting their line of handsets updated to it, while releasing their first few that have it pre-loaded. Android 5.0 in Q2, pfft.

I will say this, we may see signs of it at Google I/O which just so happens to be in Q2.

All better? I am, just had to get that out.

Via:  DigiTimes