Google’s ‘Android N’ Possibly Referenced In Samsung’s Galaxy S7 Edge And S Pen Related Listing

It was reported Wednesday that Samsung unwittingly confirmed the existence of the Galaxy S7 Edge via its Website by adding it as one of the eligible devices to show the “new screen modes.” The new modes will apparently be bundled with the Android 6.0 Marshmallow update to all the Galaxy handsets with an edge display. In addition, the same official page also refers indirectly to the future Android N version.

The official entries in the developer section specific to the “Look SDK 1.3.0,” which helps the developers in taking advantage of the unique input options via the S Pen and the side-edge displays, have given out key details. The page says "Look offers specialized widgets and service components for extended functions of the Samsung Android devices." The same section has a list of functions supported by the SDK as shown in the image below.

However, upon carefully observing the listed functions, some of them say "will be deprecated in N.” Here comes the question of what could possibly be Samsung referring to by the letter "N"? The obvious guess is that the functions mentioned above could be "deprecated" in the upcoming OS version Android N.

This guess work is further corroborated by the listing on the same page which now says "Edge Single Plus mode is supported in Galaxy S6 Edge M OS, and Galaxy S6 Edge+ M OS." However, Samsung previously had “Galaxy S7 Edge M OS” listed among the above devices.

Having inadvertently referred to the upcoming S7 Edge, Samsung has since removed it. The letter "M" right next to device names refers to Android Marshmallow, which is supposed to bring all the new modes to Samsung's devices, Phone Arena reported.

Therefore, it is safe to assume that the word-set "will be deprecated in N" might refer to some features that will not be available in Android N or Android 7.0, specific to Edge devices and the S Pen.

Speaking of Android N release date, Google CEO Sundar Pichai acknowledged that the annual I/O developer conference will be scheduled a bit earlier this year, likely between May 18 and May 20. This is when the search giant is expected to unveil its powerful Android 7.

I/O'16 coming to neighborhood where it all started 10 yrs ago: Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, May 18-20. More details soon. #io16

— sundarpichai (@sundarpichai) January 12, 2016