It’s getting increasingly likely that Google will announce the successor to Android 5.0 Lollipop, Android M, at its IO 2015 event this week, and now a Google software engineer has confirmed that we’ll be seeing the latest Android this year.
The engineer in question is Hiroshi Lockheimer, and he announced in an interview with Fast Company that this year we’ll launch M – the strongest confirmation yet that we’ll get Android M in 2015.
Although no specific dates were given about the launch by the time it does reavel M, Lollipop will have been out for about a year, and if you think that’s a bit soon for a new major relase it looks like you might have to get used to it.
Annual Android
According to Lockheimer, Google has adopted a yearly cadence of big releases, so, for instance, one year we release J, the next year we release K, and then the year after that L, and then this year we’ll launch M, and so you can predict what will happen next year.
This means we should expect to see Android N in 2016, but if the updates are coming thick and fast will Google run out of ways to improve Android? Lockheimer doesn’t think so, and suggests that we’ll see Android on a lot more varied devices.
The trick is not to think about them in isolation… It’s really about thinking about these different screens, if you will, holistically. How do they work with each other? A watch, and a phone, and a TV, and a car, and a tablet, how can they coordinate, and how can they actually enrich our lives, and make things that were harder before more useful?
While some of us are still waiting for our devices to be updated to Android 5.0, it looks like Google is looking towards a future that has a lot more Android on a lot more devices. We’ve contacted Google to find out more about Android M’s 2015 release.