At the Mobile World Conference yesterday, Eric Schmidt, the boss of Google addressed the prevalent fragmentation issue that plagues Android devices all over the world. In his keynote address, he was quoted saying “We’ve got an OS for phones called ‘Gingerbread’ and one for tablets called ‘Honeycomb’. G and H. You can imagine that the next will begin with I and will be named after a dessert, and it will unite them.” And the “I” as we already know is Ice cream sandwich (sandwich because a regular ice cream would look too much like Froyo). This means that in the future, there won’t be Android for tablets or Android for phones – Android will work on both devices the same. Great news for all those worried about Google abandoning their smartphone operating system with the introduction of Honeycomb. Though there wasn’t any mention of when this was going to happen, it was stated that Google will be working on a 6-month release cycle for Android updates, which should clear some headaches about too many/too little updates with no fixed timeline for manufacturers to update their devices with. Hopefully by the end of the year, Google can put the whole Android fragmentation issue behind them and march confidently into the future.
