Android OS 2.0 goes official, formula to compete iPhone?

October 28th, 2009 by Annkur

Ok even I hate bringing up the iPhone every now and then while discussing smartphones and Android, but hey look at the brighter side – I didn’t say iPhone killer, I said ‘compete’ :P

Just days before we see the Android 2.0-powered Motorola Droid and probably the Android 2.0-powered Xperia from Sony Ericsson,  the version 2.0 of the OS has been made official and the SDK with new API’s is out for developers to play with. There are a whole lot of goodies for users and platform tweaks for developers – a complete list is here (video after the jump). But what excites me are the steps that will counter some of the major iPhone advantages.An important advantage that the iPhone enjoys on the developer side is avoiding the hassle of serving different hardware specs each time when developing apps. As you will see in the video below, Android 2 (starting 1.6 actually) adds support for multiple screen sizes and resolution, s0 that developers need not make different versions of their apps to support different screen sizes/resolutions. This takes the load off the developers to port their apps for multiple devices (a challenge that Nokia is facing with the Ovi Store, and which people are were speculating for Android).

Android 2.0 also revamps the graphics architecture to support better hardware acceleration and give a much better gaming experience. This way the Android counters the great gaming advantage that the iPhone enjoyed.

Together, all the small tweaks and updates to Android makes the platform ready for the ecosystem to be built up. We can expect some great apps and devices, and perhaps before Apple releases its next gen iPhone, we will get to see some real competition in the smartphone market for the ‘Jesus Phone’. For the moment lets sit back and see what the Motorola Droid and Sony Ericsson Rachael bring for us.


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Categories: Android, Tech Industry News, Videos, sony ericsson | Tags: , , , , , ,

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