Android M: is M for Milky Way?

At this year’s Google IO we already knew they were going to announce Android M. But what would it be called? We predicted Marshmallow. However, a few eagle-eyed Phandroids noticed that Head Android Engineer Dave Burke was wearing something quite interesting on his Android Wear watchface:

That is 100% a milkshake which stands, of course, for Android Milkshake. Burke even confirmed this fact himself but perhaps not in the way you might expect:

So now we know two things:

• The Milkshake on his watchface was in reference to Android M being Milkshake


• That is not the final name for Android M… it could be any number of M-named desserts cycling through his Android Wear watchfaces

If you watched the keynote as closely as we did, you may have noticed something pretty darn interesting about the introduction video. Not only did they talk about “Andromeda Galaxy” – which sounds an awful lot like “Android” and Samsung’s “Galaxy” – but they flashed the name of the next major galaxy on the screen…

Milky Way.

The above photo was taken from my seat at the keynote. Also worth noting: the lone new Android M Wallpaper is a picture of earth taken from space. Could Google already be teaming up with Samsung for the first Samsung Milky Way Galaxy device? Conspiracy theories away!

This doesn’t prove anything either, but at least now we’ve got two new front runners for Android M’s official name. So which one do you think it will be? Android Milkshake or Android Milky Way?