Here’s some news bound to excite and reason to rejoice for those drooling over the android 2.2 Frozen Yogurt (codename Froyo) official release. Much anticipated Android 2.2 Froyo has been officially announced at the Google I/O 2010 conference today. But, what features have been unveiled over the current android 2.1 Éclair version? Let’s have a quick snapshot on android 2.2 feature list which is almost similar to the one rumored earlier.
Home screen – now provides native integration with Twitter, as already happened with version 2.0 with Facebook. The button on the dock of individual applications has been replaced and now has quick access to calls, the keypad and the Internet making it easy to access them from any of the 5 home screen panels. New Home screen tips widget guides the rookies on how to configure multiple home screens with shortcuts and widgets.
JIT compiler - The new Dalvik JIT compiler has been introduced as expected in Android 2.2, in which the CPU is 2-5 times faster in performance as compared to Android 2.1 éclair offering. The performance speedup from Android 2.1 to Android 2.2 using various benchmark have been tested. For example, LinPack in android 2.2 is almost 6 times faster than its predecessor android 2.1 éclair.
Android browser - Google is claiming that the web browser riding on Android 2.2, is the world’s fastest for mobile devices, though time will tell if it will march ahead of Opera Mini or Apple’s Safari or Fennec. Performance of the android browser has been enhanced using the V8 JavaScript engine, which enables faster loading of JavaScript-heavy pages, bringing about 2-3X times improvement in JavaScript performance vs. android 2.1. In addition to it, there is now compass support for Google Maps in the browser, so no need to launch the Maps app for compass support anymore.
Flash Player 10.1 Support - Google has announced the support for Flash Player 10.1 Public Beta and AIR developer pre-release and demonstrated Flash working on Nickelodeon. However, this integration will enable the websites supporting Flash content to be accessible from the Android devices running on android 2.2 Froyo Operating system. Many sites have already optimized their content for android 2.2 Froyo OS like Blip TV, Dailymotion, Justin.tv, Miniclip, Armor Games, BBC, Wall Street Journal Online, National Geographic and more. The complete list of supported websites can be found here. The video of the Android 2.2 (Froyo) update running on the Nexus One clearly demonstrates Flash 10.1 capabilities.
We are already acquainted with the fact that Android is being ported to number of touch pads. The Flash 10.1 support on android should provide true comfort of surfing and anyone who has used an iPad will tell you, using a touch pad without flash is not pleasant at all.
Internet Tethering - Now every Android smartphone running android 2.2 can be turned into a wifi hotspot without additional applications, to offer USB and Wi-Fi Internet Tethering. Tethering enables you to share your phone’s 3G internet connection with your laptop anywhere in the world (provided your phone carrier’s availability), with a choice of WiFi tethering or USB Tethering.
Earlier, Tethering on Android phones was never so easy which involves rooting your phone, installing a custom recovery image, and a custom kernel and so on so forth. Different methods for different android phone on different network were required which were very tedious to follow, even for nerds. Currently, there are no words on whether carriers can disable it. But it should be, else it would have an extra load on network.
Microsoft Exchange integration – Android 2.2 now comes with an option of either numeric pin or alpha-numeric password options to unlock device. You know how easy it was earlier to hack the password and break into your mobile hacking. If your device is stolen then don’t you worry? But now with froyo you can easily wipe out the data remotely. Other features like exchange calendars, syncing exchange accounts, global address lookup (auto complete) are also supported.
Camera and Gallery - Gallery now allows users to peek into picture stacks using a zoom gesture. Camera onscreen buttons provide easy access to a new UI for controlling zoom, flash, white balance, geo-tagging, focus and exposure. You can also set video size/quality for MMS and YouTube. LED flash has now been enabled for the Camcorder allowing you to shot videos at night or in low light settings.
Multiple keyboard languages – Reason to rejoice for Multi-lingual users. You can now add multiple languages to the keyboard and switch between them by swiping across the space bar.
Kernel Memory Management Boost: This one is huge indeed! Developers were able to bring improved memory reclaim by up to 20x, making app switching much faster and smoother, even for low memory devices.
Search Option – In past we reported a video, showing a new search box with a small arrow below the ‘G’, which we speculated that Google might provide user to conduct their search through different search engines. But actually it turned out to be different. The search option now provides new ways to work with android applications. You can now search in Google, web, Apps or contacts.
Application Manager - Added a real task manager to know all the downloaded applications, those running, those stored on memory cards etc. User Interface of native application Manager is very neat and clean. You can also kill processes and free up memory. Say, goodbye to third party Android Application Manager, dazzboard and SystemPanel but can still be used for advanced statistical analysis.
Goodies for Developers – With a set of new APIs developers can now build applications for data backup and restore with advance features and utilize Android Cloud to Device Messaging to enable mobile alert, send to phone, and two-way push sync functionality. In addition to it, developers can now provide an option to install the app either on internal memory or on SD card.
Camera API now supports portrait orientation, zoom controls, access to exposure data, and a thumbnail utility. A new camcorder profile enables apps to determine device hardware capabilities.
Error Reporting: Provides access to Android Application Error Reports (reported by users) for android developers, so that the error can be prevented or fixed in the future.
Other features included are: Improved Google Voice Search which recognizes long sentences, Real-time language translation, updating multiple apps in one go instead of updating one by one, using voice gestures to open application, Voice dialing over Bluetooth, Ability to share contacts with other phones, Support for Bluetooth enabled car and desk docks and improved compatibility matrix with car kits and headsets.
