Google announced details of the latest update – Froyo – to its Android operating system, with news that its partners sell more than 100,000 Android-based handsets on a daily basis.
Added to this, there are now more than 180,000 active Android developers and more than 50,000 apps on Android Market – an increase of 12,000 on last month alone.
Froyo (frozen yoghurt) is the seventh Android update from Google – Version 2.2 – and brings with it some interesting updates, including the ability to use your Android handset as a mini Wi-Fi hotspot and a brand new set of APIs (Application Programming Interface) for building apps that deliver data backup and restore options as well as utilise Android Cloud to Device Messaging to enable mobile alert, send to phone, and two-way push sync functionality.
Froyo itself is faster than its predecessors: the new Dalvik JIT compiler in Android 2.2 delivers a performance improvement of between two and five times faster than the current iteration in CPU-bound code vs Android 2.1, says Xavier Ducrohet, Android SDK tech lead.
The web browser on Froyo will also be faster and more powerful as it is using the V8 Java script engine yielding two to three times of an improvement of Java script performance.
Android Market, from the developer point of view, has also improved: it provides Android Application Error Reports, a new bug reporting feature, giving access to crash and freeze reports from users.
“Android 2.2 will be here soon, and some devices will get the update in the coming weeks. I invite application developers to download the new SDK and tools and test your applications today,” said Ducrohet.
Google also announced Google TV at I/O 2010, an integrated web and TV experience that uses both Chrome and Android technologies.
By Marie Boran
