David Flynn16 April 2009, 6:08 PM
In Android’s most significant update yet, this month’s 1.5 upgrade gets a slicker and more streamlined interface plus the ability to delete or archive multiple Gmail messages.
Google is expected to release Android 1.5 by the end of this month, in an effort to bring the open source smartphone OS up to snuff with competitors such as the seemingly unassailable iPhone.
A revamp of the core elements in Android’s UI framework has resulted in a cleaner, leaner, more stylish and quite Apple-esque interface.
Android's new look: the original 'New Contact' screen (left) is a clunker compared to the streamlined 1.5 (right)
An additional UI polish has been given to separate modules such as the browser, Gmail, Calendar and Contacts clients along with in-call screens and SMS messaging. Google has also added animated window transitions, although these have turned off by default.
More useful will be the introduction of a screen-based QWERTY keyboard plus a text prediction engine to speed typing.
The WebKit-based browser is geared for snappier JavaScript with copy-and-paste support, searching within the Web page, a unified search and address bar borrowed from Google’s Chrome browser plus a tabbed screen for bookmarks, history and your most visited sites.
The Gmail application now supports batch operations so that multiple messages can be tagged and then deleted, archived or labelled at once.
Other links to Google’s online services include the ability to post recorded videos – also a new feature in 1.5 – to YouTube and upload photos to Google’s Picasa photo-sharing site. SMS, Gmail and email applications all show the current status of friends in Google Talk.
Android phone also get creature comforts such as Stereo Bluetooth (A2DP) and automatic pairing with Bluetooth headsets. On the hardware side applications can rotate when the phone’s accelerometer detects a new orientation, while camera start-up and acquisition of GPS signals are both said to be faster.