Android 4.0 to Come in 2011 as 'Ice Cream'

The list of Android releases should be expanded next year with two new versions, including Android Honeycomb and Ice Cream. Following the release of Gingerbread, which should arrive later this year as Android 3.0, it seems, we should see Google releasing Android 3.5 and 4.0 next year, each named after new desserts, in an alphabetical order.

Of course, this is not something new for the Mountain View Internet giant, which has been naming its Android releases after desserts ever since early last year, when it unveiled Android 1.5 Cupcake.

The following versions of the operating system came with similar names, all in Alphabetical order: Donut for Android 1.6, Éclair for Android 2.0 and 2.1, and Froyo (short for frozen yogurt), for Android 2.2.

The next iterations of the mobile platform, namely Gingerbread and Honeycomb, should continue that tradition, and they are expected to be followed by Ice Cream sometime in mid or second half of the next year.

According to a recent post on Forbes, the move has been already confirmed, though not by Google themselves.

ARM President Tudor Brown is the one who confirmed that Android 4.0 would be called Ice Cream, and there are little chances that he would be mistaken, especially since the company's processors are being used in over 95 of all mobile phones out there.

According to the said post, Google already confirmed the next two versions of Android: “The next platform release names are Gingerbread and Honeycomb. Additional timing and details have not been released yet.”

However, the company is keeping mum on the Android 4.0 release, which would be called Ice Cream (this is one of the few desserts that starts with the letter 'I', and fits Google's roadmap).

The company might not announce something on Ice Cream until next year, especially since it already has two platform versions on their way to the market, but there are great chances that the name is the correct one.

Back in September, Samsung unveiled the existence of Honeycomb before Google announced anything on it, which suggests that ARM's President Tudor Brown might have got the name right in the end.