Android 2.3 Gingerbread Features

Android 2.3 Gingerbread Features

Google's method of rapidly and regularly dishing out updates to their Android platform is a great way to get people more and more excited about their smartphone platform. But its negative effect is that existing owners of Android phones (other than the Nexus One) crib and cry about the delays till an update comes to their phone. For example, owners of the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 have gotten their Android 2.1 update just now, something Google had put out to the world in the beginning of January 2010.

The latest Android 2.2 (or Froyo as it is popularly known), was released to the masses on May 20 this year. It brought in performance improvements, Wi-fi hotspot functionality, the ability to install apps on an SD card and Adobe Flash 10.1 support.

Android's version 2.3 or Gingerbread was supposed to come out of the cookie jar yesterday (November 11) but there's no official word on it till now. However, there have been a couple of confirmed new features, like improved copy-paste and social networking features as well as support for Google's new WebM video format. There is also some speculation about it including features like an iTunes-like Music Store, revamped UI, support for bigger screens and higher resolutions (up to 1366 x 768 pixels).

Either way there are a few small things sorely missing from the most recent build of Android that we'd like to see be a part of version 2.3. Also, there are a couple of features that we think would do good as well. Read on to find out what they are.

Google Audio and Video Chat Integration

Apple brought the dying concept of video-conferencing on cellphones back to life with their "FaceTime" feature on the new iPhone 4 and the fourth iPod Touch. You can make video-calls using Wi-fi with it and avoid paying call charges by the minute, which you would have to if you were making a typical 3G video call. Now that people have started getting excited about video-calling again, this is the perfect time for Google to make the best of the opportunity. The disadvantage of Apple's Facetime, other than its inability to work over 3G networks, is that it, as of now, only works on the two Apple devices mentioned above and a Mac.