Android 2.2 was announced on May 20, 2010 at Google I/O. This mobile OS had its first release (Android 1.0) in September 2008. Now as the seventh release, Android 2.2 has a lot of improvements and is gaining market share. Android 2.2 was first released on August 12, 2010 with the Motorola Droid 2. All mobile phones running Android 2.1 can upgrade freely to Android 2.2. Sony Ericsson also stated on their blog that they would upgrade the Sony Xperia X10 to use Android 2.2 in Q4 of this year. The current phones can upgrade to Android 2.2 for free — read their article here.
Android 2.2 is unlike its other competitors — besides Linux Maemo, the other mobile OSes are not free. For example Windows Mobile, iOS for iPhone and iPad, Symbian, and RIM Blackberry. Google Android is well known for its fast performance and fast internet browsing. And now Android 2.2 supports Adobe Flash 10.1. Not like iOS 4, which needs to be jailbroken to support Adobe Flash.
Besides its fast web browsing and performance, Android 2.2 also supports Microsoft Exchange for security, corporate email, and multi-language keyboard, and has a nice UI and UI framework for easy development for open source developers. The best thing about Google Android is that it is open source. I love open source software — besides being free, the open source community is unbeatable in its development speed.
Google Android is almost 3 years old but has already gained a share of the mobile market, and could replace its competitors. It is open source, supports multiple languages, has good performance, fast web browsing, a nice UI and UI framework, can be a portable access point (hotspot), and it is supported by the Google community.
See the latest video of Google Android 2.2:
So will Google Android be the future mobile OS?