Today at its annual I/O Developer Conference in San Francisco, Google announced Android 2.2. Codenamed Froyo (short for Frozen Yogurt), it is the latest update to the first open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices.
Android 2.2 offers valuable new features for consumers, including portable hotspot functionality, support for Adobe Flash within the Android Browser, and improvements to Android Market.
Android 2.2 also delivers powerful new tools and options for developers. These include performance & speed enhancements; new enterprise capabilities; the addition of the V8 Javascript engine to the Android browser; and a rich new set of APIs and services.
Also this morning, Google offered a preview of an upcoming web-based version of Android Market and an update to the native Music app, which will allow users to access their music from Android-based handsets.
“The growth of the Android ecosystem continues to exceed our expectations,” said Andy Rubin, VP, Engineering. “Every day, 100,000 new people start using Android-based handsets. There are now more than 180,000 active Android developers who have contributed over 50,000 apps to the Android Market. Froyo is another step toward making Android an even better platform for developers, enterprises and consumers.”
Developers can download the Android 2.2 SDK and Android NDK, Revision 4 now from the Android developer site. Froyo will be made available to OEMs and the open source community in the coming weeks.