This year’s Google I/O comes at a relatively quiet time for Google. As Apple has nabbed headlines for its Apple Watch launch and Microsoft has showcased the latest Windows 10 features, Google has eschewed some of the attention it’s garnered in the past. New projects like Google Fi and experiments with self-driving cars are exciting, but it’s tough to shake the feeling that Google is working on something bigger behind the scenes.

We’re excited to find out what Google’s been building at this year’s conference, and we compiled a list of some of the major predictions for the future direction of the world’s most popular mobile platform. The technology industry is at its best when the strongest players are in tight competition with one another—and Google seems poised to give Apple a run for its money.

Android M is nearly baked

On the heels of Android 5.0 Lollipop, which debuted at last year’s Google I/O conference as Android “L,” it’s expected that the next flavor of Android will be the primary focus of this year’s conference. Google’s own scheduled workshops feature the new version of Android prominently, and is expected to further the company’s Material Design aesthetic and bring new refinements around voice control and performance.

In addition, reports from industry pundits like Bloomberg suggest that privacy and security will be a major focus of the new Android release, with new user controls over what data apps can request access to and new biometric authentication APIs that will make fingerprint scanning common and standard across the Android platform, similar to Apple’s Touch ID API access for third-party developers in iOS 8.

In keeping with Google’s alphabetical nomenclature for the previous incarnations of Android, this one will presumably be named after a dessert that begins with M—our money is on Marshmallow.

Android Pay is on its way

Google Wallet is the current home for payment cards, coupons, passes, and more on Android, and has long served as the NFC-payment option for Android purists. But new advancements in Google’s partnerships and new pressures from the successful Apple Pay on iPhone might influence the next mobile payment option on Android devices. Android Pay is rumored to expand and centralize Android payments into one experience, and could make payments on Android phones from any manufacturer more seamless and simple than ever before.

Google’s loftier ambitions with its Google Wallet product could be a banking alternative for Android users, allowing them to deposit funds into their Google Wallet account and make payments directly from Wallet within Android apps and in stores via Android phones. This future might be a few years away, but Android Pay might be the first glimpse at how Google expects us to pay for things in years to come.

Google Photos in focus

One of Google+’s best features is about to leave the nest. Google has long offered a photo backup and management product as part of its Google+ social network, which allows mobile users across platforms to automatically back up and enhance all of their photos as they take them. The service automatically groups similar photos into animated GIFs, algorithmically generates albums and videos from events, and stores nearly infinite photos for free at full resolution.

The service has earned accolades from professional photographers, technology experts, and casual users alike, but has failed to garner significant attention outside the core Google community—perhaps due to its Google+ connection, albeit an increasingly tenuous one. At this year’s I/O, Google is rumored to be severing that connection entirely. Google Photos could soon stand alone as the company’s spiritual successor to Picasa, and offer new photo options to non-Google+ users across platforms.

Following a reorganization of Google’s social product leadership earlier this year, the company has expressed an interest in dividing the best parts of its failed Google+ social network (the Hangouts messaging platform and Photos) from the main Google+ social networking experience, now called Streams. As Google continues to evolve its offerings and learn from its previous missteps, Photos might grow to become the preferred photo backup and editing solution for millions of users.

Android Home is knocking

The connected home is about to meet Android. After last year’s announcements of Android Wear for wearables, Android Auto for connected cars, and Android TV for the living room, Google is expected to extend its Android ecosystem into embedded systems within the Internet of Things. Just as Samsung is seeking to accomplish with SmartThings by 2020, and just as Apple looks to do with HomeKit later this year, Google wants to connect every object in your home to its mobile platform and to one another with a seamless and omnipresent operating system.

Following its acquisition of Nest, and its subsequent promotion of “Works with Nest” campaigns for connected home products, Google could build on this fledgling ecosystem with a version of Android for the connected home. Expect a myriad of exciting launch partners—dishwashers, smart locks, light bulbs, and more—to adopt an embedded version of the Android OS in upcoming product releases.

Nexus 5 is leveling up

Finally, Google’s Nexus products are due for a significant upgrade. The Nexus 5, which was manufactured by LG and launched to massive acclaim in 2013, is rumored to be refreshed at this year’s conference. Last year’s Nexus 6—so named for its 6-inch display, and not because it’s the sixth in a line of six Nexus phones, although it is—could remain a “phablet” option alongside a redesigned and retooled five-inch model, or could be replaced by 5.2-inch and 5.7-inch options, which are rumored to be manufactured by LG or Chinese smartphone company Huawei.

Last year’s Nexus 6—again, named for its display dimensions and not after the race of homicidal androids from Blade Runner—was polarizing due to its massive size, and Google fans have clamored for an update to the universally adored Nexus 5. As the Nexus product family matures and expands in new directions, expect Google to continue to offer top-of-the-line devices that showcase the purest Android experience at every screen size.