Everything you Need to Know about Android 2.2 in a Neat List

Today at Google I/O developer conference in San Franciso, Google announced the 7th release in the Android OS v2.2 code named “Froyo”. Android to date has had accelerating success including availability on over 60 devices, in 48 countries and 59 carriers. Android devices surpased 100K+ new device activations per day, as over 50K apps from 180,000 developers, and have surpassed Apple in total web and app usage.

Android 2.2 includes 20 new features including

• Tethering and portable hot spot capability (demoed with lot of passive aggressive knocks at Apple)
• Full Adobe Flash and Air support in the Android browser  Vic G jeered Apple saying “because people use Flash on the Web!” and “Being open means you’re inclusive, not exclusive.” This has big gaming potential
• Automatic application updates (lot of claps from the audience at I/O)
• Apps can finally be installed on an SD-Card – if there’s no room on the device apps will automatically be installed on the SD card
• Voice triggers with voice activated search, call contact triggers and translations
• Improved search that can now search within app data
• Contextually relevant Ad Sense for Mobile Apps including expandable, linked, click to call, and map based ad formats.
• Camera and video usability improvements
• A Just In Time (JIT) compiler that yeilds 2x – 5x speed up on the same hardware
• 2x-3x javascript performance improvements in the browser that ran laps around iPad in a demonstration. – using the V8 Javascript engine
• Cloud-to-Device messaging API for optimized delivery of push notifications that can drive Android Intents
• App data backup API
• Application crash reporting details for developers with lots of details

New Enterprise Features

New features to address enterprise demands including Microsoft Exchange friendliness providing

• Auto discover
• Global Address List (GAL) integration
• Security policy enforcement that can be enforced on device with new apis for device management including remote wipe capability

Previews of Whats to Come

Also this morning, Google offered a preview of an upcoming web-based version of Android Market and an update to the native Music app, which will allow users to access their music from Android-based handsets with features including

• Over the air application download from a non-mobile store version to your Android device – “we discovered something called the ‘Internet'”
• Over the air purchase of music from non mobile client to Android device
• Marking all of your home non-DRM music library available by a stream, synced to all of your Android devices

Here’s the official Android 2.2 Video