Android 2.2 improvement

Performance & speed: The new Dalvik JIT compiler in Android 2.2 delivers between a 2-5X performance improvement in CPU-bound code vs. Android 2.1 according to various benchmarks.

New enterprise capabilities: We’ve added Exchange capabilities such as account auto-discovery and calendar sync. Device policy management APIs allow developers to write applications that can control security features of the device such as the remote wipe, minimum password, lockscreen timeout etc.

Faster, more powerful browser: We have brought the V8 JavaScript engine to the Android browser as part of 2.2. This has resulted in a 2-3X improvement in JavaScript performance vs. 2.1.

Rich set of new APIs and services: New data backup APIs enable apps to participate in data backup and restore, allowing an application's last data to be restored when installed on a new or a reset device. Apps can utilize Android Cloud to Device Messaging to enable mobile alert, send to phone, and two-way push sync functionality. Developers can now declare whether their app should be installed on internal memory or an SD card. They can also let the system automatically determine the install location. On the native side, a new API now gives access to Skia bitmaps.

Additions to Android Market: Android Market provides Android Application Error Reports, a new bug reporting feature, giving developers access to crash and freeze reports from users. Developers will be able to access these reports via their account on the Android Market publisher website.

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What is Android OS ?

My colleague bought HTC Wildfire from Maxis yesterday. He said that he really love Android OS. Why? I did some research from Google. Just want to share with you some info about Android OS.

Android is an operating system for mobile devices such as mobile phones, tablet computers and netbooks. Android is developed byGoogle and is based upon the Linux kernel and GNU software. It was initially developed by Android Inc. (a firm purchased by Google) and later positioned in the Open Handset Alliance. According to NPD Group, unit sales for Android OS smartphones ranked first among allsmartphone OS handsets sold in the U.S. in the second quarter of 2010, at 33%. BlackBerry OS is second at 28%, and iOS is ranked third with 22%.

Android has a large community of developers writing application programs ("apps") that extend the functionality of the devices. There are currently over 70,000 apps available for Android with some estimates saying 100,000 have been submitted, which makes it the second most popular mobile development environment. Developers write managed code in the Java language, controlling the device via Google-developed Java libraries. A Ruby implementation, allowing to write full Android apps in Ruby, is in development.

The unveiling of the Android distribution on 5 November 2007 was announced with the founding of the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of 78 hardware, software, and telecom companies devoted to advancing open standards for mobile devices. Google released most of the Android code under the Apache License, a free software and open source license.

The Android operating system software stack consists of Java applications running on a Java based object oriented application frameworkon top of Java core libraries running on a Dalvik virtual machine featuring JIT compilation. Libraries written in C include the surface manager, OpenCore media framework, SQLite relational database management system, OpenGL ES 2.0 3D graphics API, WebKit layout engine, SGL graphics engine, SSL, and Bionic libc. The Android operating system consists of 12 million lines of code including 3 million lines of XML, 2.8 million lines of C, 2.1 million lines of Java, and 1.75 million lines of C++.\

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