For several months, Google had been teasing Android fans about the name of the next Android operating system, which was simply known as “Android M.” The tech giant even made it into a guessing game and fans gamely guessed what the “M” actually stood for in the next OS.
Tech Radar stated in their report that last year, Google asked fans to guess the name of the previous operating system, Lollipop, which they now did again with Android M. Some fans speculated that it is going to be called “Android Macadamia,” while others suggested that the “M” is for Macaroon.
However, it seems like the guessing game is finally over as Google finally and officially revealed what the letter “M” stands for.
According to the latest report by Wired, the next Android operating system, or to be precise, the Android 6.0 is now officially called Android Marshmallow.
Google has always been fond of giving their operating systems sweet names. The previous operating systems were called Donut (the company’s first version,) followed by Éclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean, KitKat and the current version, Lollipop, as listed on Android’s history page.
As stated on the Android blog, app developers can now download the SDK for the Android 6.0 Marshmallow from the official website.
For the developers, there seems to be some changes in the platform of this program, as well as an API change, as mentioned on the blog post. A new “Final Permissions User Interface” has been included in the changes and an update for the fingerprint API, which, as explained “enables better error reporting, better fingerprint enrollment experience, plus enumeration support for greater reliability.”
There is no word yet as to when Google will start rolling out the update for the consumer version of Android 6.0 Marshmallow. However, as mentioned on Wired, it seems likely that the release date of the OS will land sometime in October or November.