By Anton D. Nagy | February 16, 2012 5:16 AM
This is a long shot: Google has launched Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich on October 18, 2011, Android 3.0 Honeycomb on February 22, 2011 and Android 2.3 Gingerbread on December 6, 2010. According to recent reports the second quarter of the year will see Android 5.0 Jelly Bean.
The six-eight months release cycle after Ice Cream Sandwich is definitely achievable but the vast majority out there — those who didn’t get the Galaxy Nexus — are yet to see official updates to Ice Cream Sandwich.
However, according to recent reports, the second quarter of the year will see Android 5.0 Jelly Bean, another tablet-oriented platform a la 3.0 Honeycomb. We said it was a long shot because the purpose of Ice Cream Sandwich was to unify, as much as possible, the smartphone and the tablet OS. Pushing out another tablet-oriented platform will break the role and purpose of ICS.
Another strange bit reported is that Android 5.0 will support dual-operating system designs, meaning that a tablet or slate will be capable of running both Windows 8 and Android 5.0. “Brand vendors can either choose to adopt only Android 5.0 or add Android 5.0 to Windows 8 devices with the ability to switch between the two OSes without the need to shut down the computer“, says the report.
We’re not sure such a move would be in anyone’s interest, let it be Microsoft, Google, OEMs or even users. We’re not even mentioning Microsoft’s strict hardware requirements set out for upcoming slates and convertibles; we’re going to have to disagree with the report. What do you think?
