5 Reasons We’re Thinking about Android 2.3 Gingerbread [Video]

The Nexus S could be a fab piece of hardware , but what we’re really hot and bothered for is Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

Google has an in-depth overview for developers, but here’s the highlights of what we’re digging in Android 2.3.

A refreshed UI

The Android UI in Gingerbread isn’t vastly overhauled, but aesthetically, it’s being tugged in a quirkier, nerdier pseudo-80s direction: Lots more ” Android green” and orange on black, with a flatter, two dimensional feel to system graphics. Fun! How’s it better for users? Well, the notifications bar is revamped, there’s faster shortcuts to the task manager, options and a new system-wide downloads manager.
it easier for the user to navigate and control the features of the system and device.”

A better keyboard and duplicate & paste

Yes, this deserves to be called out separately from the remaining of the UI, since a major weakpoint for Android’s been the mediocre stock keyboard. The brand new keyboard not only looks better, it’s functionally improved in different ways. The brand new layout is more spaced out with redesigned, easier-to-hit key targets, and it uses multitouch key-chording (finally!), so typing is legitimately faster. Copy and paste is less finicky, too, so you don’t desire a trackball to make it useable-it’s easier to pick what you have to copy with a more iPhone-like system of cursor selection.

Internet calling natively

I’d bet dollars to donuts that carriers are going to strip this out when they get their hands on Android 2.3, but natively and system-wide (within the dialer and contacts), Gingerbread supports VoIP calls to SIP addresses. One small step for pure data, stomped to death by carriers.

It’s faster

It’s gonna be even faster than 2.2, which offered a big performance boost on its own due to a just-in-time compiler for Dalvik, the virtual machine layer Android executes apps in. Android 2.3 adds a concurrent garbage collector the Dalvik VM, which Google says ” minimizes application pauses, helping to make sure smoother animation and increased responsiveness in games and similar applications.”

It also is only plain faster at responding:

The plaform now handles touch and keyboard events faster and more efficiently, minimizing CPU utilization during event distribution. The changes improve responsiveness for all applications, but especially benefit games that use touch events in combination with 3D graphics or other CPU-intensive operations.

Oh and it’s got newer video drivers for better looking games.

Better battery life

Despite being faster and prettier, battery life is going to higher too. ( As TechCrunch notes .) Why? Android is going to be more aggressive about managing apps running within the background, minimizing power draw (and boosting speed mutually).

It’s funny, most of the new stuff in Gingerbread-like the recent UI and VOIP-won’t make it to among the Android phones offered by carriers, even after the inexorably long look ahead to 2.3. But that doesn’t mean we will’t be excited by it.

Source

This post is tagged: copy and paste, depth overview, different ways, dollars to donuts, garbage collector, manager options, virtual machine