Well here’s something pretty major in regards to the upcoming Ice-Cream Sandwich (or Android 4.0) release later this year; Texas Instruments OMAP 4 is to be CPU of choice behind the release, much like Tegra 2 was the CPU of choice for Honeycomb tablets before the Android 3.2 release. This news came about from a Texas Instruments PR representative who let slip the image above and said that TI are in a close relationship with Google in regards to the next major Android release.
Android 4.0 “Ice-Cream Sandwich” is meant to be Google’s major step towards stopping further fragmentation of the Android ecosystem. It will run on phones, tablets and everything in between without being on different version like it is now: Android 3.x for tablets, Android 2.x for phones. To further add to this rumour, Andy Rubin has gone on record saying..
“What we do is pick our partners, a semiconductor partner, an operator, and an OEM and then combine them all together. This is the device that engineers have on their desk when they come in the morning.”
So it seems we might be seeing a 1GHz Dual-Core OMAP 4430 or 1.5GHz Dual-Core OMAP4440 as the semiconductor, and as we already know Vodafone is the Nexus operator here in Australia; all we need now is the manufacturer. LG are a massive user of OMAP processors (OMAP 4 in the Optimus 3D) so they might be it, or it may even be Samsung who will source OMAP 4 CPUs instead of their own CPUs to build the ‘Nexus Prime‘. Exciting times ahead!
