More Android 2.2 Info, Flash 10.1 Available in Beta

Mountain View-based Google has just released a new version of its mobile operating system, Android. Dubbed Froyo (short for Frozen Yogurt), the new Android 2.2 platform should help the company gain even more market share in the smartphone OS segment, based on the nice range of new features and capabilities it is set to deliver to end users (the platform registered a 600 percent increase in market share over the past 12 months).

“The growth of the Android ecosystem continues to exceed our expectations,” said Andy Rubin, VP, Engineering. “Every day, 100,000 new people start using Android-based handsets. There are now more than 180,000 active Android developers who have contributed over 50,000 apps to the Android Market. Froyo is another step toward making Android an even better platform for developers, enterprises and consumers.”

In addition to announcing the launch of Android 2.2, Google released a new set of application development tools into the wild, and announced plans to make the Android Market available from the web, as well as to release a native Music app for Android devices. These add to the new features packed inside Froyo, which include performance improvements, a faster browser, enterprise capabilities, and more.

What end-users will observe in the new OS includes a new Home screen tips widget, dedicated shortcuts for the Phone, applications Launcher and Browser, support for multiple languages on the keyboard, a faster browsing experience courtesy of the newly added V8 engine, a two to five times Dalvik Performance Boost, improved security, and a series of other features too, all of which are detailed on the Android Developers website here.

Another appealing feature of Android 2.2 is support for Adobe Flash Player 10.1. Announced to arrive since late last year, the technology has been finally made available on Thursday, though it is still in beta. “It turns out that on the Internet, people use Flash,” Google vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra stated yesterday, and the fact that there are a lot of users awaiting for the solution to land (and not only Android users) should prove the same. Unfortunately, it seems that only Android 2.2-based devices will be able to taste Flash Player 10.1 at the moment, but it is a start.