Unless you’re a professional (or aspiring) software developer, you should mostly care about the start date of the Google I/O 2020 conference, though, as that’s when we expect all the “real”, consumer-oriented action to happen. We’re talking first and foremost about a new version of Android, which will probably make its debut in an initial beta form a couple of months prior to May 12. 

Android 10, for instance, saw daylight as a beta under the preliminary name Android Q on March 13, getting fully fleshed out, vastly improved in terms of stability, and expanded from Pixel phones to more than a dozen other devices made by various other companies on May 7. So, yeah, if you’re excited about potentially taking Android 11 for a spin before the masses on non-Pixel phones, you should go ahead and mark the May 12 date in your calendars.

More importantly, however, there’s a very good chance some cool new hardware will find its way up on the Shoreline Amphitheatre stage for an official May 12 announcement. While this is historically a software-centric event, Google has broken with tradition a number of times over the years, most recently with the Pixel 3a and 3a XL launch last year. Given the popularity of these mid-range models, we fully expect a Pixel 4a we already know quite a bit about to break cover at I/O in less than four months.

Other possibilities include a long overdue upgrade of the 2016-released Google Home smart speaker, yet another Wear OS refresh (maybe joined by the mythical Pixel Watch), and various other breakthroughs across fields as diverse as artificial intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality, image recognition technology, IoT, mapping, email, and so on. Bottom line, you should definitely keep your eyes peeled for a May 12 livestream to be shared at a later date.