BARCELONA--Google's next version of Android, which has been called both "Ice Cream" and "Ice Cream Sandwich," will combine the phone and tablet versions, Google executives said here at Mobile World Congress.
"The two of them – notice that starts with a G and the next one starts with an H. You can imagine the follow-on will start with an I and it will be named after a dessert and it will combine capabilities of both the G and the H release," Google CEO Eric Schmidt said.
During a later interview with Phone Scoop, Google Android Engineering Director Dave Burke said that the next release for phones will share Honeycomb's visual cues, its app switcher, and its contextual "action bar."
There's been some debate for a while now about whether Android 3.0, also known as "Honeycomb," would come to phones. Google has said that Honeycomb is a tablet-oriented release, but executives said things like "features will arrive on phones over time." The Honeycomb PC emulator also has very limited, broken support for phone screen resolutions.
The path is getting clearer. Google OSes are open source. Once Honeycomb goes open-source, manufacturers who want to put it on phones will be able to do so, but it looks like Google is strongly suggesting against it.
This situation is like the dual-core processor 'requirement' for Honeycomb (but perhaps more so): while Google would never enforce a processor requirement, the only tablets they're giving their initial blessing to before Honeycomb goes open-source are all dual-core.
Google's preferred path for phone makers looks like going straight from Gingerbread to the "I" release, the next version of Android, which will bring Honeycomb features to phones. It's yet to be seen how that version will negotiate the different tablet and phone UIs. Google has not said when the next version of Android for phones will come out.
Chloe Albanesius contributed to this story.