Ice Cream Sandwich to debut in Oct. or Nov.
Google's own Eric Schmidt reveals in an interview that the latest flavor of Android will hit the market sometime in October or November.
Android users waiting for the Ice Cream Sandwich version of the mobile operating system will see the latest flavor pop up sometime in October or November.
Google's own executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, tipped off the time frame for the new version of Android in an interview yesterday with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.
Uncovered by Android and Me and other sources, the videotaped interview shows Schmidt specifically saying that "we have a new operating system, internally known as Ice Cream Sandwich for some reason, which is being released in October/November, which everyone's really excited about."
The time frame does match up with earlier reports from Boy Genius Report that Google was working hard to push up the launch date for the next version of Android from the end of the year to as early as October. With Apple's new iPhone rumored to hit the market in early October, a source told BGR that Google doesn't want Android subscribers coming off contract and "drooling over the iPhone 5."
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Aiming to combine elements of the Honeycomb and Gingerbread versions, Ice Cream Sandwich will be Google's first attempt to unify its mobile OS into a single platform that can run equally well on both smartphones and tablets. ICS developers will get new open-source APIs and a framework that will help them optimize their apps to run on a variety of different Android phones and tablets.
The Samsung Nexus Prime is a likely candidate to be the first Ice Cream Sandwich phone. Citing a report from Korea's Electronic Times, BGR last month said that the Prime is slated to launch in October, again matching up with the time frame that Schmidt revealed.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The video below shows Schmidt's comment about Ice Cream Sandwich at the 30:25 point.