It looks like the little Gingerbread man is already blinking in the dazzle of all the attention it’s getting. Google finally unveiled an SDK for the shiny new Android 2.3 OS, better know as the Gingerbread platform. The mobile OS comes with an entire bunch of new user, developer and platform features which could possibly make the Android fanatic think of life as nothing but an exciting roller-coaster ride.
From the user point of view, the menus and settings now sport a different look that’s expected to be more easily navigable. The virtual keyboard seems to have received some major enhancements meant for quicker and more intuitive text input. It can now correct entered words from suggestions in the dictionary, with users required to select a word that’s already been typed in order to look up suggestions.
A suggestion can be accepted and changed later from the original group of suggestions with the Smart suggestions function. A pop-up menu containing accented characters, symbols and numbers can be accessed by holding down on select keys and sliding to pick a character. For those who find it annoying to manually switch between input modes, multi-touch key-chording allows for symbols and numbers to be added easily through the Shift+
The keyboard improvements don’t stop at that, text or content from web pages may be selected by pressing on a word in order to switch to free-selection mode and then setting the selection area by playing around with a couple of bounding arrows. The cursor mode can be activated by a slide-press gesture and repositioning of the cursor arrow may be carried out by simply dragging it. There’s no need for a trackball for the said modes. Now if only Google could conjure up an ‘undo’ feature for text messaging.
The other improvements span over better management of apps and visibility of the power being imbibed by the CPU for energy efficiency and a shortcut to the Manage Applications control which sits pretty in the Options Menu in the Home screen and Launcher. User access to multiple cameras on the device running Gingerbread and internet calling to friends with SIP accounts ought to get a mention too.
The Downloads application delivers more convenient access to files downloaded from the browser, e-mail or any other application with an entirely new download manager utility. Additionally, there’s a Near Field Communications (NFC) Reader application that lets users ‘touch’ or ‘swipe’ an NFC tag which is part of a sticker, a poster or an advertisement.
Google’s Nexus S smartphone is the first Android phone to ship with Android 2.3, big surprise. More on that in a bit.