Android 4.3 is appearing in web traffic, making a Google I/O release likely
With Google I/O coming up in the next few days, rumors and predictions are to be expected. John has already talked about what he expects to see from Google’s event this year, but there have been plenty of reports, some conflicting. One of the most disappointing to me was the rumor that Google would actually delay the next version of Android (Android 4.3, at first thought to be Key Lime Pie) simply in order for the manufacturers to catch up with their updates.
There are plenty of reasons that delaying Android 4.3 Key Lime Pie/Jelly Bean would be a bad idea, but fortunately it doesn’t look like that is something that we will have to deal with. Across the web, a few different pages have noticed hits from what appear to be Android 4.3 devices. A primary example is SlashGear, which recently noticed hits from two Android versions, 4.3 and 5.3.8. Clearly, the Android 5.3.8 hits were spoofed, as evidenced by the Iran-based provider, but the Android 4.3 hits didn’t come from the same source. Others are also corroborating these hits, making them somewhat more likely to be real.
Obviously, these incidents could have been faked, but more and more reports are showing up across the web from places such as Android Police that confirm the idea that Android 4.3 is currently being tested. In fact, Android Police has seen hits from Nexus 7 and Nexus 4 devices running Android 4.3. Not only that, these requests were actually coming from IP addresses within Google.
Sadly, we don’t really know anything more about the features that Android 4.3 will bring, but according to the build number Android 4.3 will still be known as Jelly Bean. (I still used the image of key lime pie above partially because I want to be hopeful, and partially because it also looks really good.) This obviously means that Android 4.3 will be a simple incremental update, on the same scale as the transition from Android 4.1 to Android 4.2. Although most of us expected just an incremental update from the beginning, it is good to know that Google doesn’t seem to be delaying a new release for the sake of the manufacturers. We will know a lot more about Android 4.3 in just one week, but it looks like we can still expect the Key Lime Pie rumors to continue flying, even after that.
[SlashGear]
