Android Silver

For several months now we’ve been hearing rumors that Google’s new Android Silver program was going to replace the Nexus line of devices. This, of course, caused some uproar among the stock Android faithful. David Burke, head of Android engineering and the Nexus program at Google, spoke out in an interview today to put those rumors to rest. Speaking to Read Write, Burke said that people are simply getting excited about the concept of something new (Android Silver) and forgetting about Google’s reasons for the Nexus line in the first place.

“People just get excited by concepts and forget why we do things. We are still invested in Nexus,” he said. “People have been commenting about Nexus because there is something else and they think that means the end of Nexus. That is the totally wrong conclusion to make.”

Expand
Expanding
Close

Google’s annual I/O conference is only two days away but leaks and rumors leading up to this year’s show have been going strong for quite a while. In an effort to brace ourselves for Mountain View’s latest contributions to the tech world, we’ve decided to discuss what we might be seeing in the next couple of days. While some of these items are a given, others are a mix of rumors and speculation. There’s no guarantee that everything listed here will be announced during I/O, but we eventually expect to see these projects from Google at some point in time. That being said, here are some things that we might see this year in San Francisco.

Expand
Expanding
Close

We first heard about Google’s new “Android Silver” program back in April. The service will reportedly be centered around the idea of providing support to customers after they purchase their Android device, including things like 24/7 live support and a new “Never Lost” feature, reminiscent of the iOS Find my iPhone feature. A later report also detailed that Google would partner with Android device manufacturers for the service, perhaps as early as early 2015.

Expand
Expanding
Close