Android Nougat. Image Credit: The Next Web
Google finally settled on a name for its next mobile Android operating system; and it’s called Nougat. This brings to an end various speculations of what Android N would be.
Google’s new version of the mobile operating system is due out later in the year; and the company threw the floor open, asking for entries from people. The company opened an online poll where people sent in various name suggestions.
Google named previous versions of its mobile operating systems without crowdsourcing—but opted to do something different this time around as it concludes plans to replace Marshmallow with Nougat.
It was pretty obvious that its next operating system would start with a letter N, but no one was sure what it would be. Actually, the press speculated that Nutella was going to get the nod; but that would have led to some licensing issues.
Google’s next operating system includes a split-screen multi-window mode, a redesigned notification shade, seamless updates, a new Data Saver mode, and supports for Daydream, which is Google’s new virtual reality platform, reports Venturebeat.
Google also surprised a lot of us when it opted for Snapchat as the medium to announce its next Android operating system. The choice of Snapchat is quite interesting, considering the fact that the picture sharing app recently overtook Twitter in terms of daily users. The fact that messages on Snapchat only last 24 hours makes the choice of the platform pretty odd—but that surely is a story for another day as we await the release of the next Android mobile operating system before the end of the year.
Google took to its official blog to reveal the name Marshmallow last August, and users were probably expecting the company to use the same platform in announcing Android N.
Another unique thing Google did with Android N was a test version, which was released earlier than normal—developers were offered a preview in March. This was a clear departure from previous practice where upcoming versions of Android OS were released at Google I/O, its annual developer conference. “By releasing the first preview and asking for your feedback now (in March!), we’ll be able to act on that feedback while still being able to hand off the final N release to device makers this summer, so they can get their hands on the latest version of Android earlier than ever,” Hiroshi Lockheimer, Android gaffer wrote in a blog post last March.
Beyond the name and other surprises surrounding Thursday’s announcement of Google’s next Android operating system, the new OS has an unenviable task of keeping users hooked and competing with Apple.
Earlier in the day, the company had taken to the social media to tease us with images of the new OS. Various status representing names of past versions of Android appeared during the course of the day before a short video story finally revealed the statue for Android Nougat.
How Google arrived at picking this name is not clear, but what we do know is that all speculations have now been rested.
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