The name game!

Ginger, Ginger, bo Binger, Bonana fanna fo Finger

Fee fy mo Minger ... Honeycomb?

Yes, kids, it's time for another round of the Android Name Game! Today's episode is brought to you by WP Wong, Head of Product Planning at Samsung. Mr Wong, as Alex reported earlier, let fly this morning with the first on-record mention of Android OS: Codename "Honeycomb" from anyone with a better title than "Blogger" ahead of his name.

Turns out that folks inside Google HQ are strongly leaning towards making "Honeycomb" the first Android release optimized for tablets, and making it the 3.0 release, thus relegating "Gingerbread" (which we all thought would be 3.0) to incremental release status along the lines of 2.3 or 2.5. Or so I was told by "a person familiar with the matter" (everyone's favorite source!)

Gingerbread would slot into a role as the OS of choice for lower-end smartphones, while Honeycomb would be come the version restricted to tablets and "superphone" level devices. Sound familiar? Yeah, to me to - feels like just a few weeks ago we were talking about "Eclair" (2.0/2.1) being the low-end OS, while superphones got them some Froyo (2.2). Things change right quick in the tech game, huh?

Frankly, this won't much matter to the majority of consumers if indeed it proves true: Most folks want a phone that works, and couldn't care less about what form of sweetness its software is named after. You? You may well care, for any number of reasons ranging from to a stupid bet you made in a nerdy bar to anger that your 2.1 device might not be eligible for some Honeycomb. Me? I care because just a week ago I went on national TV yapping about how 3.0 would be called "Gingerbread." Ah, well, I'm still not wrong. I'm just saying that someone who knows just told me that I'll probably be proven wrong in the end. But hey, it's the risk I take for living such a dangerous life!

Sorry, I thought I was James Bond - and not a blogger - for a minute there ...