Jelly Bean, Key Lime Pie: The next two versions of Android

Google likes to name their Android releases using sweets in alphabetical order: Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Frozen Yogurt (FroYo), Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich. This obviously begs the question, what’s next? Benson Lin, who is a Vice President at ASUS, revealed to TechRadar in an interview that Android 5.0 will be called Jelly Bean. He doesn’t say what’s going to make it special compared to Ice Cream Sandwich however, so we’re left hunting for a changelog. Several hours after that story hit the internets, another article was published, this time by the folks at The Verge, who say:

We’ve been tipped by a reliable source today that Google will be using the name “Key Lime Pie” for the version of Android that comes after Jelly Bean (in fact, the information comes from the very same source that tipped us to the Jelly Bean codename last year).

Sadly they don’t have any details as to what’s going to be inside Key Lime Pie, nor do they have a release date. What we want to know is when will Google slow down? Or better put, when will handset and tablet makers speed up at rolling out the latest versions of Google’s mobile operating system? As of February 1st only 1% of Android devices that have access to Android Market have the latest version of Android, aka Ice Cream Sandwich, installed. More than half, 58.6% to be exact, of all Android devices are still on Gingerbread!

We hate to bring up Apple and their software update model, so let’s not do that. Let’s bring up Microsoft instead. If you bought a first generation Windows Phone back when the platform launched in late 2010, then you’re running the latest software, despite the OS running on a variety of handsets. Thank Microsoft being extremely restrictive for that.

When’s Google going to grow a pair of balls and force everyone to unify with their vision of how Android should look and feel?