The Android Operating System was launched as an open source on 21 October 2008. Google opened the entire source code including network and telephony stacks under an Apache License. With an Apache License vendors can add propriety extensions without submitting those back to the open source community. There have been many updates to the Android operating system since.
After April 2009 there were several new features and UI updates included in the 1.5 update. It has the ability to record and watch videos through camcorder mode. Videos can be uploaded to YouTube and pictures to Picasa directly from the phone. A new soft-keyboard with text-prediction is a very useful application. It had the support for Bluetooth A2DP and AVRCP, ability to connect to a Bluetooth headset automatically within a certain distance, new widgets and folders that can populate the Home screens and animated screen transitions. All these were available 1.5 Cupcake based on Linux Kernel 2.6.27.
The 1.6 Donut based on Linux Kernel 2.6.29 got released on September 2009 and had several new features. It had an improved Android Market Experience and an integrated camera, camcorder and gallery interface. The gallery enabled the users to select multiple photos for deletion. It also feature updated Voice Search, with faster response and deeper integration with native applications that included the ability to dial contacts, updated search experience that allowed for searching of bookmarks, history, contacts and the web from the home screen. Updated technology support for CDMA/EVDO, 802.1xVPNs and a text-to-speech engine took the features of this phone to a different pedestal. It had WVGA screen resolutions support, speed improvements in searching and camera applications and also had a Gesture framework and GestureBuilder development tool.
October 2009 saw the release of the 2.0 Éclair SDK. It optimized hardware speed, supported more screen sizes and resolutions, revamped UI, had new browser and HTML5 support, new contact lists, better white-black ratio for backgrounds, improved Google Maps 3.1.2, Microsoft exchange support, built-in flash for camera, digital zoom, and MotionEvent class exchange to track multi-touch events. Improved virtual keyboard, Bluetooth 2.1 and live wallpapers are some more of its improved features. This release was eventually followed with the release of 2.0.1 SDK on December 2009 and 2.1 SDK on January 2010.
The release of 2.2 Froyo SDK on May 2010 made great news all over. Optimizations were made in the general Android OS speed, memory and performance. There were also some other additional application speed improvements, Chrome’s V8 engine was integrated into the Browser application, Microsoft Exchange support (like security policies, auto discovery, GAL look up, calendar synchronization, remote wipe) was increased. Application launcher with shortcuts to Phone and Browser applications was also improved and it also supported the functionality of USB tethering and WiFi hotspot. It has an added option to disable data access over mobile network, updated market application with batch and automatic update features. It has a quick switch between multiple keyboard languages and their dictionaries and also supports voice dialing and contact sharing over Bluetooth.
