Android Advisor

Goodbye Android Q, hello Android 10

The last piece is Pie. Or you can just refer to Android 10 as Android Quit.

- MICHAEL SIMON reports

After six betas, there isn’t much we don’t know about the next version of Android, but there was still one burning question: what dessert starts with the letter Q?

As it turns out, there aren’t any good ones. Android Quik? Android Quesito? These would have been ridiculous. But now it’s a moot point, as Google has

dumped its sweet treat naming scheme altogether, falling back on numbers as identifier­s. This year’s release will be Android 10. That’s it.

Google isn’t saying that it was just too hard to come up with a pronouncea­ble dessert that begins with Q. Rather, it’s saying that this developmen­t was a long time coming, as the rest of the world was sometimes confused with US-centric branding. As Google explains: “Pies are not a dessert in some places, and that marshmallo­ws, while delicious, are not a popular treat in many parts of the world.”

Its coincident­al that the naming change is being implemente­d when one of the hardest letters in alphabet rolls along. And while R, S, and T would have been easy, U, V, and Z are no picnic either. So Google cut its losses and dumped the whole thing.

Once Android 10 lands, we’ll all get over it, of course, but deserting the desserts is sure to be a sad day for longtime Android fans. While there was technicall­y never an ‘A’ or a ‘B’ version (at least as far as we know), Android 1.5 started the ball rolling with Cupcake, followed by Donut, Eclair, and Froyo, and leading all the way up to 2018’s Pie.

Along with the name change, Google is also tweaking Android’s logo to give it a ‘more modern, accessible look’. The letters in the logo are no longer green, and the classic robot head makes an appearance in an official capacity.

Android 10 will be rolling out to Pixel phones and other early devices in the coming weeks, bringing dark mode and changes to gesture navigation, among other tweaks and features.

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