The arrival of Android 10 last year may have marked the official end to Google’s Android naming convention, traditionally centred around various tasty treats, publicly but it did not mark the end of the Android custodian’s practice.
In a podcast, Android’s Vice President of Engineering, David Burke, acknowledges that Android 10’s successor, Android 11, is known internally at Google by its tasty treat name Red Velvet Cake, abbreviated simply as RVC.
“…if you were to ask an engineer on my team what are they working on, they would say ‘RVC.’ And so ‘RVC’ is Red Velvet Cake,” Burke says in the podcast.
Going all the way back to over a decade ago when Android 1.5 debuted as Cupcake, Android’s cheesy naming scheme was abandoned over what Google explained last year as the need to include the rest of the world which may have felt left out in a North America-centric naming convention at a time when Android is very global. I mean, Red Velvet Cake may not mean much to many people, for instance, using an Android device running an Android build named after it.
Even then, it will be a while before we completely shake off the old naming scheme and get onboard the numbering naming scheme which is as basic as basic gets.
For the developers in our midst poring over Android 11’s code as they prepare their applications for when the new version of our favourite operating system is made available in a few months, Android R is what Android 11 will appear to them many a time.
Since the fifth major version of Android debuted 6 years ago at Google I/O as Android L (Lollipop), Google has made a habit of using alphabetical letters to refer to new Android versions. We’ve since had Android M (Marshmallow), Android N (Nougat), Android O (Oreo), Android P (Pie) and Android Q which ended up being what we know today as Android 10.
Header image source: sallysbakingaddiction.com
