After countless rumours, leaked screenshots, and what not, Google has officially unveiled Android 2.3, dubbed Gingerbread, today. Accompanying the release of this new Android version is the Nexus S, a Samsung-made successor to HTC’s Nexus One, which delivers the pure Google experience – unlocked, without additional crap.
This latest Android release seems a bit like a true point release, but it does bring a number of interface refinements and other welcome new features. The keyboard has received a major overhaul, delivering many refinements that Google says make typing on Android easier.
“The keys themselves are reshaped and repositioned for improved targeting, making them easier to see and press accurately, even at high speeds,” the release notes detail, “The keyboard also displays the current character and dictionary suggestions in a larger, more vivid style that is easier to read. The keyboard adds the capability to correct entered words from suggestions in the dictionary.” Text selection has also been improved.
Another very welcome feature is improved power management – I don’t have an Android device but improved power management is always welcome, no matter the operating system. “The Android system takes a more active role in managing apps that are keeping the device awake for too long or that are consuming CPU while running in the background,” Google states, “By managing such apps – closing them if appropriate – the system helps ensure best possible performance and maximum battery life.”
Of course, there’s also a number of low-level improvements, like a new concurrent garbage collector in the Dalvik VM, faster event distribution, and improved video drivers. In addition, applications that use native code can now receive sensor information in native code, which should deliver some speed-ups. This isn’t all, of course – there’s more in the release notes.
The release of Android 2.3 Gingerbread is accompanied by the unveiling of the Google Nexus S, a Samsung-made smartphone that will serve as Gingerbread’s flagship device, a successor to HTC’s Nexus One. We’re basically looking at yet another variant of Samsung’s Galaxy S, but with the added benefits of being unlocked, and free from crapware. It’s vanilla Gingerbread, like the Nexus One was vanilla Eclair (and later vanilla Froyo).
Are there any Nexus One owners playing with Gingerbread already? Anything to report?
Love this new phone and android 2.3. Might be my new phone if its offered in my country.
Phone may look good but that promo video is fail.
Is the GUI still software rendered?
Almost certainly (except the transition animations which never were). Apparently the reasons are:
* Most hardware doesn’t support two concurrent OpenGL contexts, so it would be tricky to have an OpenGL view (e.g. Google Earth), and the status bar both drawn with OpenGL at the same time.
* They said software is often faster. Not sure I believe that though.
The lack of GPU hardware acceleration driving the UI has completely turned me off Android. Are they serious about delivering an improved “user experience”? If so, Google really need to act on this:
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=6914
I too have heard the “CPU rendering is often faster” nonsense from Google (the Android team). The facts speak for themselves – simply compare the smoothness/fluidity of an iPhone (even an old iPhone) or MeeGo or Web OS or a WP7 device with that of Android.
Personally I think it’s a serious design flaw that really needs to be addressed. Anyone who has used a smooth mobile OS is always put off after picking up an Android handset and scrolling through the apps or browsing the Internet.
I’ll never buy another Android handset (or tablet) until Google addresses this issue (and I’m sure there are many others like me).
I haven’t played with an version of Android since 1.5, so not sure is this has already been fixed or not.
When typing (via onscreen or hardware keyboard), do the word suggestions still cause the screen to jump around, by pushing the text input field up and down?
There’s nothing worse than having the input box move up while typing a word (as the suggestions appear) then have it move down when you hit the space key (suggestions line disappears). Typing really fast can lead to headaches.
Has this been fixed in later versions of Android?
Yes. Or I think so. I have a lot of keyboards, I don’t think I use the stock android one that much. That’s sort of what’s pretty cool about an open platform, if you don’t like the way a built in part works, there is usually a third party replacement that does what you want.
Heh, that would be true, except this LG Eve is stuck with Android 1.5, and all the nice apps and tools (like fancy keyboards) require 1.6. The LG keyboard and the stock keyboard work the same way when it comes to bouncing the screen to show word suggestions.
Ok, good point 1.5 was a bit primitive in what it offered.
You could give this a try: http://openetna.com/openetna/ Supposedly works for your phone.
I’ve been keeping my eyes on a couple different ROMs for the Eve. Unfortunately, it’s the wife’s phone and she’s not too keen on having things break.
She’s not too annoyed by it’s limitations so far. Once she is, though, then I’ll get to play. 
Personally, I’m waiting for the price of the HTC Desire Z to come down, so I can unlock it and use it on Rogers. I just can’t bring myself to pay $500 CDN for one. It comes with 2.2, and should be upgradeable to 2.3.
Works like a charm. The camera has a max 3meg limit right now but otherwise it is very fast, capable of playing games it couldn’t run before and overall reborn.
I loaded 2.2 Openetna on my LG Eve. The phone rocks now.
Nice!
Straightforward install?
The lowly ~600 MHz CPU in there keeps up?
I’ll keep this in mind for when she gets fed up with the little glitches here and there.
I loaded 2.2 Openetna on my LG Eve. The phone rocks now.
An unlocked phone with just vanilla android and no crapware. Shouldn’t they all come this way…. or at least, shouldn’t we have the option to buy them this way?
Edited 2010-12-06 19:50 UTC
That’s one of the things I find odd about the current smartphone landscape: despite being less “open” on a fundamental level, the Pre phones/WebOS still seem to be more open in practical terms (in the sense of imposing fewer restrictions on end-users) when compared with most Android phones.
So, anyone else find that “discover the magic” video to be completely pointless? What does watching a bunch of different feet walk around have to do with Android? Less than 10% of the video showed the phone in action.
Simple. Aimed at Apple target market. Bubblegummers hahaha.
The biggest news for me which is huge is built-in support for SIP calls straight from google. No third party apps necessary.
Equally cool is the wireless and usb tethering, which my nexus one already has.
I am waiting to see Apple deliver any of those two features any time now.
They had USB teltering from 3.0.0 to 3.1.0, AT&T forced it out.
If I am not mistaken, BlueTooth takes less power than wi-fi tethering. So it really escapes my mind, what is so special on wi-fi tethering, when my HTC TouchPro 2 has a BlueTooth one, and it works really well to share my Internet connection. How can Android miss on that one?
The interesting thing is that it works like a WiFi router, and that you can connect multiple devices simultanously, regardless if you have bluetooth or not.
So it’s a little more than normal tethering.
bigger news is that the rumors were correct and 3.0 honeycomb is a new tablet gui including built-in video chat http://video.allthingsd.com/video/google-andy-rubin-with-motorola-t…
The promo video is a joke. Are they advertising foot wear?
I think they are trying to advertise “coolness”.
Edited 2010-12-06 23:30 UTC
Heh yeah, I was starting to thing it was a shoe advert.
Compare iPhone and HTC ads with this one. With iPhone/HTC, the phone is always the main player in the ad. It is in the center of the screen continuously through the entire ad showing off the hardware and the software.
Edited 2010-12-08 12:03 UTC
I HATE the buttons on those nexus phones.
The reason I’ve stuck with HTC is because they use actual buttons on their phones.
No. I have an original HTC Nexus One and it uses lower screen taps instead of actual buttons for ‘back’, ‘menu’, ‘home’, and ‘search.’ I prefer “real” buttons for these functions but I’ve gotten used to it.
Hopefully with this new improved NDK you can start programming in other languages like Python.
If you build the bindings as its own separate application then all the apps that use it can still be cross-platform (well, android platforms >= 2.3 anyway).
Love Samsung, for their LCD panels, but not for the phones. Google should have stayed with HTC instead imo.
I think the idea is to have a different OEM for each release. I think LG or Motorola will be next.
What’s more likely is the engineers at Google are just chatting about their current favourite Android devices, and what they want to base their next Nexus on. The device they feel best captures Android currently. It could also be that Google want to keep an image separate from HTC, so it doesn’t look like some unholy alliance where HTC get all the cool new toys (access to latest Android code) and an unfair leg up on the competition.
I waited patiently to get a Desire HD loaded with Froyo but when I actually saw it running, I was majorly let down by the jerky UI animation and went for an iphone 4 instead. I love how everything runs smooth as silk, from the menus to internet browsing.
You chose your phone based upon the jerkiness of the GUI animations? I hope more consideration went into it than that.
Since I was going for a very expensive device, I expected as much perfection as I could get. UI experience is one of the most important factors when you buy one of these.
I’ll take that to mean there were other considerations as well. I don’t disagree when it comes to UIs, let alone spending money on UIs, which is a good part of the reason why I avoid iOS and Android-based devices but I can’t say animations rank that high in my priorities. Animations are usually the first thing I disable on my desktop.
He’s an iPhone user.. content is looser .. it’s the color of the rubber (steve wears when he screws over customers)!
Being the owner of an HTC Desire, I think the power management, if efficient, would be the biggest improvement to Android. It’s scary how fast the battery charge diminishes. I watched two 4-minute Youtube videos and did some browsing yesterday night in my bed reading news and the phone went from ~90% to 50% in less than 20 minutes! I’ve never tried to but I’m pretty convinced that my phone can’t stand an uninterrupted two-hour Youtube session. I know I can’t spend two hours talking on the phone, even on a full charge. I could leave the phone alone without ever touching it and it wouldn’t last for more than 2 days and a half!
The worst part of it: it takes a little less than 5 hours to charge from a laptop’s USB port, 3 hours from an electrical outlet. And while plugged in a USB port, running a game like Galaxy 2 consumes more power than is provided: meaning even when connected to the laptop, the battery is drained to the extent that a notification will pop up… This is a phone not 3 months old yet.
The battery life is the biggest letdown, a horrible one. Whether an OS or hardware problem, anything done to improve it is more than welcome. I mean, how useful is a phone when you can’t count on it to Sat Nav you to and from a nearby town in a one-hour drive?
I’d say this is a problem with portable devices in general. The manufacturers are so keen to make the designs sleek and small that little consideration is actually given to people wanting to use their devices. On top of little thought being given to leaving enough room for some extra battery cells, even the form factors are becoming ridiculous. Have a look at Sony’s video walkmans (walkmen?): they’re about the only devices that break the 6-hour barrier for video playback but they’ve only got 2″ screens. How the hell do you watch video on a 2″ screen?
Videos on 2″ screens? Some people have obviously lost their mind; even the 3.7″ Desire is barely acceptable to me.
Anyway, maybe that batteries will become the next battlefield? I have hope but I also doubt it: there’s nothing sexy about batteries or is there?
Wouldn’t it be great if there were after-market/third-party batteries that were extra thick, that could be added to phones, that combined the battery and the backplate into one? Thus, you get a slightly thicker and easier to hold phone, with all that extra battery life.
Similar to some of the replacement battery packs for Nintendo GameBoy/Color back in the day.
A former coworker of mine actually had exactly that for his G1. I’m not sure where he got it from though.
Nice. So there’s hope.
There are, at least for the Desire. Look on eBay.
I got something a little bit different – a battery that plugs into the USB port and has enough power to recharge the main battery nearly 50%.
Yeah, there are lots of those available, and they come in handy. They just don’t look that nice or integrated.