A little bird said...
Gadget blog Pocket-Lint had a chat with an unnamed source at display maker turned mobile device company ViewSonic and got some juicy details about the next version of Android.
According to the source, who presumably isn't supposed to be discussing such things with journalists, Google is going to release Android 2.4 as early as April.
The reason for the earlier than expected launch is that Google wants to update smartphones such that they're able to run apps which have been written for Android 3.0/Honeycomb - the tablet-optimised version.
It has been extensively rumoured that Google has designed Honeycomb to work with dual-core SoCs, such as NVIDIA's Tegra 2, and it seems the most recent version of Android - 2.3 - doesn't support apps written for dual-core chips. So 2.4 will be released primarily to address one issue and, therefore, not be given its own name.
The next name after Honeycomb is rumoured to be Ice Cream, or even Ice Cream Sandwich, but if 2.4 fails to get that tag it won't be the first time Google has released a new version under the old. Android 2.0 was called Eclair, but 2.1 kept that name and effectively rendered 2.0 obsolete. Android 2.4 looks set to do the same to Gingerbread, which could mean there are unlikely to ever be many 2.3 handsets or updates out there.
The context of these revelations was the hard launch of the ViewSonic ViewPad 4, which was first announced at CES. According to Pocket-Lint it has a 4.1 inch screen, runs a Qualcomm MSM 8255 SoC and should launch in April.
