Chris Alexander
A Look At Android 2.2
24th May, 2010
Well I managed to wedge the Froyo update on to my Nexus One, at last. I got a bit impatient waiting for it, so seeing as it was the official download I thought I’d take the opportunity to give it a go. I haven’t had much of a chance to play with it so far, but this is what I’ve made note of.
Let’s get the big stuff out of the way first, eh?
And when I say big stuff, I really mean it! Froyo’s JIT compiler (for more, check this out) means that there is a huge step in performance since 2.1. This includes applications, the home screen, everything. Menus are so snappy, and I thought it was fast compared to the iPhone - it is beyond belief now.
The other cool thing is the browser update means that Javascript is stupidly fast too. Check out the video below for a demo of the performance increase in action.
I could go on about these all day - but I’ll try and be restrained.
The wifi hotspot creation is just fantastic - iPad users will love it, I should think Apple and the networks probably won’t. I wonder how many networks will disable it - not a worry for the unlocked users though.
The new “push-but-don’t-call-it-that” functionality is also brilliant. More coming up on that in a future post, but in essence it is equivalent to Apple’s push for the iPhone, but without it being a replacement for on-device incapabilities (i.e. no multitasking). You can also push applications from the new Android Market online to your phone (but that’s not quite live yet).
Below is the video from the keynote with more on this.
I could also swear that my trackball just glowed blue…
This update is probably big enough to justify more than just a single revision step. There’s some extremely powerful stuff, and I’m really looking forward to the next release of Doughnut, allegedly coming out in Q4.