If the latest reports are to be believed, we could be seeing the next major release of the Android OS, Version 5.0 aka Jelly Bean as soon as June this year.
The reports come from Digitimes who have cited various supply chains within the mobile market as sources of the information. If the release date turns out to be accurate, it’s possible that Google are perhaps planning on giving Microsoft a bit of competition as it should coincide with the launch of Microsoft’s new Windows 8 operating system.
Not a lot is known about Android 5.0, but it’s thought that the next major release will add yet more features for users of Android powered tablet devices.
The current version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich made its debut towards the end of last year with the launch of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Currently though there are very few Android devices on the market that feature 4.0, however various handset manufactures are working hard on rolling out ICS to their Android devices. The Gingerbread version (2.3.3 – 2.3.7) is currently the most popular version with 58.6% of Android devices having it installed. As it stands version 4.0 only accounted for just one percent of devices. We have hopes that the roll out of the latest version will take speed soon and we’ll start to see more and more devices having the update applied to their Android device. We’re also guessing we’ll probably see a considerable amount of new Android devices at MWC at the end of the month, no doubt running ICS.
Getting back to the Jelly Bean update though, I’m sure you’ll agree with us when we say we hope this information turns out to be correct. I’m hoping we’ll get to see some more nifty new features along with some intuitive new ways of improving usability, Google doesn’t usually let us down. I’ll guess we’ll just have to wait and see though.
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