Android 2.0 screenshot walkthrough
Posted by
Boy Genius on Oct 16, 2009 12:14 pm
161 comments Filed in
Android,
BG's Corner,
Exclusives
We hope you Android lovers out there are sitting down, because we’reabout to knock your socks off. Android 2.0 hasn’t been released,announced, or even pictured. Until now. And we’re doing it like we’redoing it for TV — major screenshots and major information right here,just for you, our beloved readers.
Android 2.0 looks to be a major improvement in Google’s mobile OSand we couldn’t be more excited about it. From native Exchange supportto native Facebook support (it will sync with your contacts), browserimprovements, a completely updated Maps application, unified emailInbox — there’s much, much more — and a brand new UI makeover, version2.0 starts to make Android a really viable (and interesting) platform.Bounce over the jump for all the screenshots and our walkthrough!
Please note: this isn’t the final build of Android 2.0 and thefollow reporting is based on the version we have running. Things canand will change prior to release.
Microsoft Exchange compatibility looks to be built-in to the OS now,and the new unified Inbox is perfect for keeping up with your personaland corporate email. You can star (flag for the corporate world)emails, mark multiple as read or unread, delete, forward — whatever youwant basically. Emails load effortlessly. Unfortunately (or not sounfortunately) the unified Inbox won’t work with your Gmail account asthat uses the specific Google-made Gmail email application in Android.
Maps has been updated to include Layers. We’d imagine this will growover time but now you can overlay search queries, Wikipedia entries,Latitude buddies, traffic, transit lines, and even load remote My Mapswhere you can share and receive directions with others. Android 2.0seems to have some multi-touch gestures built-in like two-fingertapping in Maps, that will zoom in, however, there’s no gesture to zoomout and pinching doesn’t work. © Apple.
The browser has a nice little UI makeover with a redone URL entrybar which includes a Favicon. In terms of performance, no this versionwe have doesn’t have Flash 10, Google keeps making strides in thebrowser space. It’s worlds better than anything we’ve used previouslyon a stock Android OS, and jumps one notch higher than HTC’s customizedbrowser. There is not multi-touch in here as of now, but, you candouble tap to zoom in and zoom out which is really all we’ve beenasking for since Android 1.0. Oh and did we mention this thing flies?We’re talking ridiculously close to iPhone 3GS web page speeds.
There’s now a YouTube widget you can place directly on yourhomescreen and that allows for literally two-click YouTube videouploads. You hit record, the video recording app launches, you type ina title and description for your newly-recorded video, and it’s up andaway.
While the settings area is roughly the same overall, there’s a lotof interesting additions in 2.0. For starters, there’s haptic feedbackbuilt-in and a brand new Accessibility option. There’s also a newoption for Text-to-speech and generally with Android 2.0, you’re givenmore control over the settings of your phone and more opportunities tocustomize it based on your liking. Something completely bewildering isthe fact that if you set a lock code for the phone (seriously givepeople a choice to use numbers or letters as the passcode), there’s nolock interval option, so each time your phone turns off (about every 30seconds when not in use), you’re forced to enter the password again onarrival. Lame.
Car Home. What? You don’t know what that is? Ok, it’s a newapplication that’s meant to be used, uh, in your car. Seriously it’sactually quite nice. It’s a consolidated list of icons that help youperform things (presumably using voice commands if you’re driving).Things like doing a voice search across the internet, getting drivingdirections, viewing a location on a map, selecting a contact, searchingthrough your phone, etc. It’s very cool that you can say, “map of gasstations” and that will open Google Maps and show you on the map whereall the gas stations are closest to you. Not exactly new technology,but hey, we didn’t say it was. We said this was all about pushingAndroid forward, and it is.
The Amazon MP3 application seems to work over 3G instead of justWi-Fi now, but whether that is something done because of Android 2.0 orjust because of the carrier it’s running on, we’re not positively sure.
Contacts seem to be much more roomy and there’s some greatfunctionality built right in. Instead of hitting the contact and thendiving through it to find the contact information you need, just tapthe contact’s photo. Up will spring a clean and tidy sub-menu with thepertinent information which can be clicked on. Send someone an emailinstantly, open up their Facebook profile, or even call them! Very cooland all great things that we love seeing.
Things like the music application and gallery application don’t lookto have changed too much, if at all. There also looks to be some moreflexibility when defining homescreen shortcuts and things of thatnature.
That’s all we have for you today, guys. What do you think of Android 2.0 in its not-final version? We’re loving it. And it could help that it’s running on a pretty bad ass piece of machinery, but hey, that’s for another day.
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