Android N is officially called Nougat
For the uninitiated, there are two things that go into naming the latest flavor of Android. First, it has to proceed alphabetically from the last version. Second, it has to be a candy or dessert. For example, "K" was for 2013's KitKat, "L" was for 2014's Lollipop, and "M" is for Marshmallow, the Android version released in October.
Google made the announcement on Snapchat and Twitter.
For the first time, Google in May said it would choose this year's name by asking fans for suggestions. The idea came after Google CEO Sundar Pichai was in India last year and joked that the next name would be decided by an online poll. The nation's 1.3 billion people, he quipped, could choose the name of an Indian sweet.
And so Google ran with the idea to crowdsource the naming process. A Google spokeswoman said the company received millions of submissions from around the world, and that Nougat was one of the most popular non-brand suggestions.
That might explain why the company didn't choose Nutella or Nerds, two fan-favorite candidates. It's unclear if Google was even considering brand names. (We've asked, but Google has not responded yet.) The only time the company has done that was with Android KitKat, which required a licensing deal.
Some of the major new features for Android Nougat are a VR mode, which gives the software some extra oomph when a phone is placed in a headset and used as a virtual reality viewer. Another is a battery-saving feature called Doze on the Go, which allows a phone to conserve power while it's sitting in your pocket. Nougat, still in beta, will be officially released in the fall.
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