And comes packed with cool new stuff

May 20, 2010 18:35 GMT  ·  By

The second day of the Google I/O 2010 developer conference just kicked off with two major announcements, Android 2.2 and Google TV, neither of which were exactly surprises. The first part of the morning’s keynote was dedicated to Android. The latest and greatest version is here, Android 2.2 codenamed Froyo, and the entire platform is looking healthier than ever.

Android has been around 18 months now, though it certainly feels a lot more than that. In that time, VP of engineering at Google Vic Gundotra told the audience, Android had made it into 60 devices from a broad range of manufacturers. Of course, the key point is how many phones were actually being sold. Google’s previously shared numbers show that the company was seeing 30,000 device activations per day in late 2009. Just a couple of months later, in February 2010, the number was up to 60,000. Now Google says, 100,000 Android-powered devices are being activated every day.

Android 2.2 Froyo is two to five times faster than previous versions

With that, it was time to introduce the latest addition to the Android family, Android 2.2 Froyo, which was largely expected to be launched at the conference. There are a lot of things to be excited about in Android 2.2, chief among which, as early indications showed, is speed. Froyo is lightening fast thanks to a huge increase in app and browser performance.

Google was able to achieve this by adding a just-in-time (JIT) compiler to the Dalvik Java virtual machine that serves as the underlying layer behind every Android application, including Google own’s. Along with other enhancements, this makes apps in Froyo two to five times faster, according to Google.

Chrome V8’s JavaScript engine now powers the Android web browser

This rise in performance is mirrored by a faster web browser as well. Google was able to integrate the V8 JavaScript engine its developers built for Google Chrome into the Android web browser. V8 is one of the fastest JavaScript engines out there and Google says that it now allows JavaScript web apps to perform two-to-three times faster on Android than before.

The Android browser beyond Froyo

And Google is not done yet, the web browser is central to anything that the company does, so it is looking at how to better integrate the web and web apps with the mobile device. The company demoed a couple of features that are not in Froyo but are coming further down the line that demonstrate this.

One was access to the accelerometer present in most smartphones today, which the browser used to keep the Google Maps mobile website leveled as the device was tilted. The second interesting feature was access to the built-in camera enabling the Google developer on stage to snap a pic and post in on Google Buzz all from within the browser.

Adobe Flash 10.1 on Android

Another announcement that surprised no one is the integration of the latest Adobe Flash Player 10.1 beta. In the context of the Apple versus Adobe battle, this announcement is all the more interesting. Still, we’ll have to see how it actually handles to reach a verdict on whether Flash web content on mobile devices makes sense or not.

Android 2.2 Froyo comes packed with new stuff

There’s plenty of other cool new stuff in Android 2.2 Froyo, things like automatic app updates, moving apps to the SD cards, tethering and portable hotspot functionality (another feature eagerly anticipated) and many others. Another very interesting feature was the Cloud-to-Device Messaging API, a great tool for sending notifications and initiating events on Android devices remotely. All-in-all, Android 2.2 looks to be a very solid release.

Google I/O 2010

- Chrome Web Store
 - WebM, Google’s Open Video Format for HTML5  - WebM - A Technical Overview and Possible Legal Issues  - 

Google Wave is Now Open to Everyone

 - Google Wave for Apps and New APIs  - Google Storage for Developers  - Google Buzz API  - Google App Engine for Business and VMWare Partnership  - Google TV Set to Conquer the Living Room    - Music May be Coming to the Android Marketplace    - YouTube Leanback for Google TV    - Presenting the New Fonts API