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Google has introduced the new version of Android in typical fashion, erecting a massive Jelly Bean statue on its front lawn.
The sweet sculpture bears the traditional Android shape, but has a clear cylindrical body that’s packed to the gunwales with oversized jelly beans. It was strongly tipped already, but the addition of the new statue confirms that Jelly Bean is the next version of Android.
The timing of this new statue couldn’t be more significant. Tonight sees the kick-off of Google I/O developer conference, where the search-monger is reckoned to be launching a Google-branded Nexus tablet.
The statue is the clearest hint yet from the Big G that any devices unveiled tonight will arrive running Android Jelly Bean. The so-called Nexus 7 is rumoured to be a 7-inch device with a 1,280×800-pixel resolution, powered by a quad-core processor.
It’s tipped to have no camera — a cost-cutting effort from Google that could see the Nexus on sale for as little as $200 for the 8GB model. You could probably swap that dollar sign for a pound sign to get the UK price.
Jelly Bean follows an alphabetic Android naming tradition, and is the follow-up to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, which in turn was preceded by Android 3.0 Honeycomb. Google risks getting ahead of itself by introducing Jelly Bean — at the start of May the software was running on a mere 5 per cent of Android devices.
I can’t wait to see what Google’s cooked up for the newest version of its mobile operating system. Be sure to check back later when we’ll be spilling the Beans on the new edition, and let me know what you’d like to see in the comments or on our Facebook wall.
