The latest Android OS version 2.2 (“Froyo”) was announced at the Google I/O conference on the 11th of May. As you already probably know it adds multiple enhancements like tethering, wifi hotspot functionality, full support for Flash, etc. Since I use my Nexus One phone for Android development, I did not want to download the update from Google and then install it with adb. I just wanted to wait for the over the air update.
And to my surprise, the first time I looked at my phone this morning, I had this message on the screen:
I was not sure how long it would take, so I just hit “Install Later”. Then a couple of hours later, when I was ready, I just went to Settings -> About Phone -> Software Update and hit “Restart & Install”:
The phone rebooted and started the upgrade. The whole process with the installation took less than 5 minutes.
I am not going to go into details what the features of Android 2.2 are. There are so many announcements and blog posts on this matter already out there…
But what I am going to say is that Android is the leading OS in the mobile phone market right now. I can say this definitively, since I have been using iPhones for the past 2 years. I have a 3G and a 3GS phones. I encourage any iPhone user to go and check out an Android device. Please do not look at the low end hardware that runs Android (like the Cliq, the old G1, etc.). Check out the HTC Evo, the HTC Incredible, the Nexus One etc. See for yourselves before you make your decision to get another phone and lock into a 2 year contract. I will mention only a few things you will discover on the Android device that your phone probably does not have right now:
- Turn by turn voice navigation
- Built in tethering
- Built in WiFi hotspot capability supporting multiple devices
- Full support for Flash
- Full blown multitasking on the OS level (no need for the programmer to do anything special)
- Integrated speech recognition across the board. Voice input could be used anywhere in place of the text input.
- Over the air updates and syncing. That means no iTunes or the like!
And many other features that I do not want to get into details right now. I am sure you can fill in the gaps for yourselves…