A Taste of Froyo: Google Android 2.2 Explored
by Saumitra Bhagwat on June 23, 2010 1:03 AM ESTApplication Specific Updates
Gallery
The Gallery app now supports pinch-to-zoom gestures. When you pinch and zoom on an album, the pictures scroll across the screen giving you a preview of its contents. The order of the scrolling can be manipulated depending on how you pinch the screen. Google seems to have taken a page directly from Apple as the iPad has a similar feature in its Photos app. Although it’s a nice addition to an already well-made app, its implementation is rather awkward and leaves much to be desired.
Camera
The Camera app now has on-screen controls for focus, exposure, geo-location, white balance, flash and zoom. All the controls are orientation aware (regardless of whether automatic orientation is enabled) and change smoothly when you switch modes. Compulsive photographers who’d like to have greater control while taking pictures will find this extremely handy. I found the new controls quite useful at times, especially for those quick shots where time is of the essence.
Gmail
The Gmail app now supports fast account switching, thanks to a little button on the top right corner of the app. Google’s also (finally!) added previous and next buttons to quickly scroll through threads. The app also adds support for colored labels and allows users to cut, copy and paste text from emails. Another handy addition is the ability to install .apk files directly from emails. Thanks to these new features, the Gmail app is vastly more usable in Froyo.
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Android Market
The Market app at long last added the ability to update all installed apps simultaneously. The interface has now been tweaked to have two tabs, one for the description and the other for comments.
You can also set rules to automatically update apps whenever an update is made available. It’s a great feature if you have a lot of apps installed on your phone and something that is still lacking from iOS.
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YouTube
The YouTube app remains largely unchanged, except for that little HQ button that lets you toggle the video quality. While some have found the default video quality on v2.1 and v2.2 to be almost the same, but non-HQ clips seem to appear worse on Froyo.
Browser
Froyo’s browser adds the new V8 Javascript rendering engine that promises a 2x performance boost from Éclair (v2.1). I’m happy to confirm that these claims are largely true and the browser performance is absolutely stellar! The new broswer managed an amazing score of 36079 in the BrowserMark test with its closest competitor, the iPhone 3GS scoring a far 26897.
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Saumitra - Wednesday, June 23, 2010 - link
Good point, but the AMOLED or the more recent Super AMOLED screens are only present on the high-end devices from HTC or Samsung. Since majority of the devices are still on TFT screens, I guess black text on white is a step in the right direction. ;)mpschan - Wednesday, June 23, 2010 - link
I thought 2.2 was supposed to include bluetooth dialing.http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-2.2-highl...
So my question is: Does Froyo include bluetooth dialing or not? If it is included like , how in the world could the author not mention it. That is a deal breaker for so many of us as many states ban hand-held phone use in cars.
Hell, I'd love to see the feature just so my iPhone loving friends lose another talking point as to why iPhones are superior.
Saumitra - Wednesday, June 23, 2010 - link
Well, I was aware of the Bluetooth dialing feature, but I didn't have a Bluetooth headset to test it out. Sorry for the confusion!mpschan - Wednesday, June 23, 2010 - link
Understood.But let me stress how important a feature this is. I will not buy a new Android device until this feature is implemented. The risk of getting a ticket or having to pull over to the side of the road to make a call is ridiculous.
Since you put in something about how you couldn't test exchange, I'd recommend doing something similar for bluetooth dialing.
homebredcorgi - Wednesday, June 23, 2010 - link
Do you mean the ability to just speak the contacts name in the headset and have it dial? If so, it is there...I did it yesterday on my N1.CombatChuk - Wednesday, June 23, 2010 - link
HTC actually pays Microsoft to put an actual Activesync license on devices that have Sense UI. Having the license on there enables Remote Wipe, Pattern Recognition all the features that Server admins like to run. Google with their Nexus One DID NOT pay for this licensing, so if the Server admin doesn't enable those security features (which he should if he's worth anything) then the stock Android 2.2 OS does not have full exchange support...Red Storm - Wednesday, June 23, 2010 - link
When oh when will we get some sort options in the market? I'd love to be able to sort apps by their rating, download count, release date, name, etc.homebredcorgi - Wednesday, June 23, 2010 - link
Seriously. The market is a mess without sorting abilities. I was very sad to see that Froyo did nothing to address this issue.Jingato - Wednesday, June 23, 2010 - link
I guess it doesn't have the one feature I was hoping for and really think it is lacking. That's the ability to begin entering a phone umber and have it populate a drop down of all the matching contacts and recent calls that match. :-(Saumitra - Wednesday, June 23, 2010 - link
Although the dialer does not have that feature natively, there's an app called aContacts or Dialer One that gives you that feature so give one of them a shot, they're free. ;)