The folks over at Google have been working hard on the next version of the Android OS code named “Donutâ€. They dropped in some new code to the Android source tree and it’s sounding pretty awesome.
Cyanogen, the Android developer over on XDA has been working hard to integrate the new branch into a ROM for the G1. So far we have a semi-working ROM that you can play around with but currently has no Network connectivity. You can download the ROM and find out more info at this XDA thread.
New features include (but not confirmed):
- Many performance enhancements
- Gestures
- System-wide multi-touch (according to Cyanogen, the Multi-Touch support is not in the main Android code itself but there are Kernel commits to support it)
- Universal search
- text-to-speech (without downloading the existing speech libraries)
- System backup support
- New camera app
- CDMA Network support (Sprint, Verizon here we come)
- wpa enterprise encryption
- VPN support
Cyanogens current ROM is running in the emulator right now and a “Not for public consumption†test ROM is available for the G1 for you guys to play around with.
I’m not sure on the version numbering of this release. Some people are saying that this is Android 2.0 and some are saying that it’s an intermediary between 1.5 and 2.0. Not that it really matters as long as the Android OS keeps moving in the right direction.
Stay up to date with Cyanogens progress on his Twitter account and as always, keep any eye out for more info on AndroidStory and my own Twitter account.
