The internet is going crazy over a bug that was reported in the Chromium source code yesterday by an alleged Google employee running a version of Android dubbed “KRS36B”. What’s Chromium? It’s the 100% open source version of Chrome. Why is “KRS36B” important? Because of that first letter, the “K”, which denotes Key Lime Pie, the next version of Android.
Isn’t this obvious, though? Of course Google is testing the next version of Android. They’re always working on “the next big thing”, to steal a line from Samsung’s marketing. The question we should be asking is when will Key Lime Pie come out and what will be its standout features?
Rumor has it that KLP will be tuned to run exceptionally well on low end hardware. This is important for two reasons. One, most Android devices sold today are not the Galaxy S4 or HTC One, they’re sub $200 devices made by Chinese companies you and I don’t even know. Two, if Google seriously wants to put Android on a watch, or other wearable computing platforms, they need to cut the fat.
Now when will we see KLP? I want to say by the end of this year, but I’m not so sure anymore. We used to see a new version of Android every winter, along with a new Nexus, but last year that changed with the Nexus 7. Will things go back to “normal” this year? It kind of makes sense, from a marketing perspective, to put Android 5.0 on the Nexus 5, which has a 5.0 inch screen, no?
