Google's Doodle is usually changed to celebrate the anniversaries of scientific, literary and artistic giants. So when the search engine started throwing the party hat on to celebrate the anniversary of the ice-cream sundae it was pretty much confirmed that the new Android OS will be called Ice Cream (following in the footsteps of the other tasty treats before it.) Can smartphones get diabetes? Maybe after Ice Cream Google will put their mobile OS on a diet and we'll all have phones running Apple or Orange? Just a thought.
But let's forget about the name for a moment and take a look at what Ice Cream means for our phones. The main feature of Ice Cream will be its hybridisation of Honeycomb and Gingerbread (the former being more smartphone friendly and the latter being more tablet friendly.) Does this mean that Google don't want to split up the Android OS. It seems that Google are eager to keep all their eggs on one basket and have one super OS which can jump effortlessly between tablet and smartphone. Which of course is sensible because the boundaries between the two are distorting and shifting all the time.
We'll also be seeing a lot of Google TV with Ice Cream. If you not aware of what Google TV does, it combines TV search and web search. Gives you apps and web surfing on your TV and lets you use your smartphone as a remote. Social integration with TV is going to be huge soon and it seems Google are on top of their game.
They'll also be the standard tweaks and fixes to improve overall performance and they'll probably be exciting new features coming too. We'll keep you informed as soon as we know any more.