Android 2.2 Froyo – What do I like about it?

Google has been rolling out the Android 2.2 (code named Froyo) update to all the Nexus One users over the air. I got the update yesterday and have been trying the new things on Froyo. Trying to reconcile what they said it will have and what it has.

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Here is a list of things I liked about Froyo:

• Performance improvement & enhanced browser speed. Performance improvement is one of the main features used to advertise Froyo. But, I could not notice it clearly as I never had to wait for any operation even with the older version of Android 2.1. Search seems to be very faster than the previous version. Rendering on browsers seem to be faster with the V8 Javascript engine.
• Flash Player 10.1. Flash player seems to be friendly with the browser. I have tried out few flash gaming sites like miniclip.com and I was able to play some of the most addictive PC games on mobile. Played for around an hour and Flash player managed to run without any crashes. Now, I can play TED videos directly from the browser. :-)
• Improved Camera and Gallery. Camera interface has been revamped and it looks cleaner now. It has been made easy to control zoom, flash, white balance, geo-tagging, focus and exposure with the new interface. Another cool stuff with the camera is the flash mode for videos which means that videos can be shot at night as well.
• Android Cloud to device messaging. Android Cloud to device is a  mechanism which allows sending messages from cloud to your device. I tried sending some bookmarks from Google Chrome to my phone using ChromeToPhone extension. Once the message is sent from the Cloud, it will open the browser / Google maps on your phone with the web page / location. This is an awesome feature. 
• Apps on SD Card. Though Froyo supports installation of applications on SD card, most of the developers have not implemented this so far. Little disappointed over that.
• Improved User Interface for GMail, GTalk, Calendar applications. Changes have been made with the objective of improving the accessibility. 
• Misc. Other noticeable features include Tethering & Wi-Fi Hotspot, Contacts grouping on Call log, Enterprise support, etc.

Froyo is not a major update but has a set of significant new features. I am loving it. The next major version of Android 3.0 (code named as GingerBread) is likely to focus more on the User Interface to avoid the fragmentation problem.

-- Varun