Android's Next Big Update May Be Entirely Contextual (In 2015)

This week there's been word from Google – in a round-about way – that a new contextual OS will be coming our way by 2015. Based on the wording delivered in the tip, this could easily be another push for Android – and based on how infrequent the updates to Android have been over the past year or two, it's not unrealistic that it would be delivered by the suggested 2015.

The original iteration of Android was delivered in 2008. After that, all inside the year 2009 there was a version 1.1, a version 1.5 called Cupcake, 1.6 Donut, and 2.0 Eclair. In the year 2010 we saw both Android 2.2 Froyo and 2.3 Gingerbread. Fast forward to 2011 and we saw the single update of Android into a tablet-friendly OS in Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

With the dawn of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean in 2012, the dessert names essentially stopped. Here we are in 2013 and no new big changes to the operating system are planned at all – not according to our sources, at least. Seeing what we saw this year at Google I/O and in the dawn of the Moto X this week seems to confirm such suspicions: it's Chrome time now, and time for Google Now to take over as well.

Over in an article on TNW by Robert Scoble, it's mentioned that "inside Google" they're aiming to create a contextual OS that "might see the light of day in 2015".

That could mean a lot of things, but what it likely suggests is that Android, Chrome, and everything in-between will be converging at levels we've not yet seen. It's all about sensing you, your body, and your wants and needs that will keep Google at the forefront of the device industry. Staying smart means staying in-tune with you, the human.

The idea that the next significant update to Android will be waiting until 2015 to be released is a real possibility – until then, expect late-breaking features to be revealed piecemeal.