Android 2.2 (Froyo)

Google announced Android 2.2 (codenamed as Froyo) today at the Google I/O 2010. I hooked onto YouTube for the live streaming of Android keynote by Vic Gundotra. He talked about lots of cool things about Android 2.2 and there were some exciting demos. Google will be sending out the Over-the-air (OTA) updates to some devices in the coming weeks. Devices with HTC sense UI will have to wait till HTC builds its UI for the just announced Android 2.2. More details can be found here and here.

Key points from the Android keynote:

• Performance improvement: With the new Dalvik JIT compiler, Android 2.2 can perform 2-5x faster than 2.1
• Enterprise features: Over 20 enterprise features have been added. Some of the most important ones include remote-wiping, minimum password, calendar sync, etc.
• Application data backup: With Android 2.2, your application data gets backed up on the cloud. Whenever you are changing the device, you can get back the application data from the cloud.
• Send to Phone: Apps can send messages / alerts to the devices from the cloud via the “Android cloud to Device Messaging” feature. Vic demonstrated this feature by sending a direction on the map from the browser to the device.
• Tethering & portable hotspot: Android 2.2 will have a built-in support for Tethering & portable WiFi hotspot. You can turn your Android device into a WiFi hotspot and at most 8 other devices can connect to the Android device.
• Enhanced browser: Browser has been built with the V8 Javascript engine (Javascript engine used in Google Chrome) to make it faster. A race was conducted among iPad, Android 2.1, 2.2 and Android 2.2 was way ahead of others. HTML5 and beyond. Accelerometer works right inside the browser.
• Better speech recognition and translation.
• Flash 10.1: This is something which we all know – Android 2.2 gets Flash & AIR support.
• Apps on SD card: Developers can decide whether the application should be installed on SD card or internal memory.
• Enhanced Android Market: Apps can be configured for automatic updates. Whenever any application crashes, the Android market will send the details of the error along with the crash details to the developers.
• Send apps to Phone: Apps can be sent to the phone from the Android market web.
• Syncing the media files: Google has acquired Simplify Media and with that you can play your music from iTunes and other media services.
• New Ad formats for mobiles were announced.
• Google is giving away HTC EVO 4G phone to all the attendees of Google I/O 2010.

-- Varun