With all the hoopla lately about Android 2.2 (aka Froyo, which means frozen yogurt by the way) I figured I would write a brief rundown of some of the new features you can expect from the latest and greatest version of the Android OS.
Home screen
A new tips widget will grace your homescreen. This widget will assist new users on how to configure the home screen, adding shortcuts, adding widgets and how to use multiple home screens.
Another new home screen feature, as you can see, are dedicated buttons for the Phone, Launcher and the Browser.
Exchange Support
No doubt, one of Android’s most lacking features is exchange support. Well that will be changing with Android 2.2. Froyo’s new and improved Exchange support will include the following features:
Improved security – Exchange admins can enforce a password policy across devices with support for numeric or alpha numeric passwords to unlock a device
Remote wipe – Exchange admins can remotely wipe the phone to factory defaults if the device was lost or stolen
Exchange calendars – Will be supported in the Calendar application
Auto-discovery – With just your username and password, you will easily be able to set up and sync an Exchange account (requires Exchange 2007+)
Global address look-up – Will now be available from within the Email application allowing users to auto-complete recipient names from the directory
Camera and Gallery
A new and improved Gallery will allow you to peek into picture stacks using a zoom gesture.
The camera now will have on-screen buttons that will provide easy access via a new user interface for controlling the zoom, flash, white balance, focus, geo-tagging and exposure.
In addition, the camcorder now allows you to easily choose the size and quality desired for your video to make uploading to the web or sending video by MMS easier and more efficient. Shooting video at night or low-light conditions will be better now as well as the LED flash will become a light source when shooting video.
Make your phone a mobile hotspot
Apparently, not all devices will support this feature, but phones like the Nexus One will. When configured as a hotspot, your Froyo device share it’s connectivity with up to 8 other devices. Also, you can use the 3G connection on your phone (via a USB connection) to provide access to the internet on your Windows or Linux laptop. (Yes you can get apps for this on Android 2.1, but it will now be supported natively)
Multiple keyboard languages
Users that speak multiple languages will love this feature. You can now add multiple languages to the keyboard and effortlessly switch between Latin-based input languages by swiping across the space bar. Not only does this effect the keys but it effects the auto-correct dictionary as well.
Improved Performance
Performance increases are coming from all over with the Android 2.2 update, here’s the highlights:
Browser – By enabling faster loading of JavaScript, the V8 engine will boost the speed of the browser
Dalvik performance boost – in CPU-intensive duties, an increase of 2x to 5x can be seen
Kernel memory management boost – Memory reclamation by up to 20x. Applications will switch faster on devices with less memory
Flash!
Flash game addicts rejoice! Adobe just recently released Flash 10.1 for devices running Android 2.2 (there are some beta builds of the OS out there). So not only will you now be able to play flash games on your Android 2.2 device, but any type of interactive content will now work flawlessly on your device.
There is one downside to this though, you will now see those annoying flash ads when browsing the web. But in this writers opinion, it’s a small price to pay for the many other benefits of flash.
Misc Improvements
Bluetooth
Share contacts with other phones
Voice dialing
Support for BT enabled car & desk docks
Improved compatibility with car kits & headsets
2.6.32 kernel upgrade
HIGHMEM support for RAM > 256MB
SDIO scheduling and Bluetooth improvements
Applications
App Error Reports – A new bug reporting feature enables developers to receive crash and freeze reports from users of their Android Market apps
Apps can be installed on external storage (microSD card for example)
Apps can participate in data back up and restore, allowing users to reset their device to factory defaults and not lose any personal data
Cloud to Device messaging – Android apps can use the Android Cloud to Device messaging to allow mobile alert, send to phone and 2-way push sync abilites
Camera/Camcorder
Video FPS doubled from 10 to 20
Camera now supports portrait orientation, zoom controls, exposure data and a thumbnail utility
Camcorder also allows apps to determine hardware capabilities
Description: Features from Android 2.1 to Android 2.2 Froyo
Rating: 4.5
Reviewer: sms
ItemReviewed: Features from Android 2.1 to Android 2.2 Froyo
