Android 3.0 Being Tested In The Wild?

Most of us haven’t even gotten an official update to Android 2.2, and there are signs that some people are already running Android’s next update (3.0), otherwise known as Gingerbread. GreeneComputing found evidence supporting this through their popular android benchmark software, Linpack for Android.

While checking users results from last week, they found 17% of phones that used the software were using something other than Android 2.2 or 2.1. That added up to around 158 ROMs, the most unique being Android 3.0, 3.0.1, and 3.2. My best guess is that the Android team is testing the next version of the the Android OS on some devices and were looking at some benchmark results. It’s still interesting to see it being used, especially since there are versions higher than what we originally thought for Gingerbread (just 3.0).

I should also note that even though not many of us have gotten the official update to 2.2, that hasn’t stopped us from getting it other ways. Benchmark tests were used on phones using Android 2.2 the most at 43.1%, suggesting that many have already rooted their Android phones and installed a custom ROM built from Android 2.2. Of course, the general population of Android users that don’t mod their phones have probably never used Linpack, let alone heard of it, so we don’t know how many phones aren’t included in the results.

Are you part of the 43%? Do you wish you were that small part of the 17%? I know that if I got the chance to try out 3.0 early, I definitely would.