It has been about a week since Google surprised us and released the developer preview for its upcoming iteration of Android. If you don’t know, each update is named after a delectable dessert, dating back to Android 1.5, which was named Cupcake.
Android 1.0 and 1.1 weren’t officially named, but they were likely alpha and beta. Since Cupcake, our palettes have seen and tasted donuts, eclairs, froyo, gingerbread, honeycomb, ice cream sandwiches, jelly beans, KitKats, lollipops, and most recently, marshmallows. And like every year, the guesses have been coming in with every new taste of Android N.
If you’re debating between nougat, or Nutella, you may find it interesting that Google is using “nyc” as a codename for Android N, likely referring to New York Cheesecake. If you head over to the Android Open Source Project repository, you’ll find various references to “nyc,” meaning it’s mostly only an internal name.
So don’t worry, it’s highly unlikely that Google will name its next version Android New York Cheesecake, not because it’s quite a mouthful, but also because in previous versions, the search giant has never used internal codenames as the official name of the update. For example, Android Marshmallow’s codename was Macadamia Nut Cookie, Lollipop’s was Lemon Meringue Pie, and KitKat’s was Key Lime Pie — all delicious desserts, but not good enough for branding.
Google is also taking its own poll, most likely just to tease us, in its Opinion Rewards app, according to Android Police. The app lets you get Play Store credit for answering surverys, and a recent survey question said, “What tasty food comes to mind that starts with the letter N?” That was followed up with, “What is your favorite tasty treat from the list below?” The results were: Napoleon, nut brittle, nachos, nori, noodles, nougat, and Neapolitan ice cream.
The choices are clearly not just desserts, but they also don’t include any Indian sweets, which Google CEO Sundar Pichai hinted could be possible option in a poll when he spoke at Delhi University last year.
“Maybe what I’ll do next time, is when we’re working on the next release of Android, Android N, maybe we’ll do an online poll on what the name should be,” Pichai said. “And if all Indians vote … I think we can make it happen.”
We did our own poll here at Digital Trends, with choices between Neopolitan, Nerds, Nutella, and Nilla Wafers. Android Nutella held a strong lead with 50 percent of the votes of 443 total votes.
Poll: What should Google name ‘Android N’? @DigitalTrends @DTmobile
— Jeffrey Van Camp (@JeffreyVC) March 10, 2016
