Abandoning alphabetical naming to reshape the image, the next generation of Android is named Android 10

According to foreign media reports, Google officially released the next generation of Android mobile operating system, Android 10, which will be released this fall. This means that Google has broken the 10-year history of naming mobile operating systems after desserts and abandoned the naming method that starts with letters. The new system released this year is Android 10, and next year will be Android 11.

After a quarter of silence, the essence of the Android brand has changed rapidly. Google believes that Android's traditional naming method is a bit weird and needs to be completely eliminated, or at least changed. Google said, "First of all, we are changing the way we name things. Our engineering team has always used internal code names derived from delicious desserts for each Android version, arranged in alphabetical order. This naming tradition has also become a fun part of the annual release system. But the feedback we have heard over the years is that these names are not always understood by everyone in the global community."

In addition to adopting a new naming method, Google also updated the Android system logo to give the brand a new look. Aude Gandon, Android's global brand director, said the logo has a "more modern" text combination. Importantly, the logo will always include a green robot. "The presence of the robot makes Android unique. It makes the entire logo look more human, more interesting and more approachable."

In addition, Google also changed the color of the Android text in the logo from green to black. The company previously found that green text is difficult to recognize, especially for people with visual impairments, and black with the green robot can improve the contrast of the entire logo.

As a milestone version of the Android system, the adoption of a new naming scheme for Android 10 is of great significance. However, some people believe that Google changed the naming method because it is very difficult to find a dessert containing the letter Q.

"We will deal with this suspicion," said Sameer Samat, Google's vice president. He said the real reason for Google's name change was not that it was difficult to find a dessert with the letter Q, but that dessert names were not inclusive enough. "We have some good names, but each name cannot encompass the culture of the world." Android is a global brand, with more people using the Android system in India and Brazil than in the United States, so naming Android after desserts in English will always miss some regions.

“Pie wasn’t always a dessert, candy cane might be hard to pronounce in some regions, marshmallows aren’t a physical thing in many places,” Samat said. At least digital is universal.

Google will still develop the traditional robot statue, but it will be number 10, rather than a dessert.

As for the new logo and font, Gunton said the changes are significant, making the wordmark easier to read, especially on smaller screens. “To be honest, the current font was a challenge when we were rigorously testing it in very small spaces like screens,” she said. Most importantly, the wordmark is no longer green: It’s black, which makes it more readable in more contexts.

Another thing the Ganton team did was subtly change the robot, moving its eyes down and tweaking its antennae. More importantly, they removed some of the yellow tint from the green to make it more readable, and added some secondary colors to Android's overall brand palette to help with accessibility.

Going forward, Android will be more than just "green and gray," Gunton said. But only one of the new secondary colors is also one of Google's primary colors: blue. It's important that Google's color palette is neither too dependent on the company's primary colors nor too close to any of the primary colors used by major Android partners.

As for what the Q in Android Q actually stands for, Google will never reveal it again. Although the official name of Android will just be Android 10, this does not prevent the Android team from creating internal code names in alphabetical order. Samat said that Google engineers have chosen an internal reference for Android R.