Android 5.0 Jelly Bean to be released in Q3 2012?

While most of us are still waiting for Android Ice Cream Sandwich to hit our smartphones and tablets, it looks like Google might be gearing up to release the next version of Android this year. According to reports online, Google might be unveiling Android 5.0 aka Jelly Bean in the third quarter of this year – lining up with the Google I/O annual developer conference at the end of June. Google hasn’t really mentioned anything about Android Jelly Bean so far, so all this should be treated as what they are – just rumors. But if it’s true, it doesn’t seem like a good move, with only 1-2% of Android devices running on Ice Cream Sandwich right now.

We know that a lot more Ice Cream Sandwich phones will hit the market later this year after seeing them at MWC and CES 2012, the number of ICS users will increase in 2012, but would it be a good idea to release a new version of Android so quickly? There are already enough problems with fragmentation as it is, and another version of Android wouldn’t help things improve.

With carriers and OEMs taking their sweet time to push out updates to all their devices (no thanks to custom UIs and skins), more and more phones are being left out of the picture, and not every Android user being tech-savvy enough to take things into their own hands (installing custom ROMs etc); customer dissatisfaction is bound to increase with the release of another Android version that they’re not going to get.

What do you think? Is the next version of Android arriving in Q3 too soon?

George Wong
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Android, Jelly Bean (Android)