Slashdot Mirror
Google's Gingerbread Man Has Arrived
Daetrin writes "Last weekend Google received the next statue in the sweets-themed series that commemorates the major updates of the Android OS. In the past this has meant that the release of the next SDK was right around the corner. However this time there's some doubt as to what the version number will actually be. Many sites (including Slashdot) have assumed that 'Gingerbread' was synonymous with '3.0,' but now there's some evidence that everyone may have jumped the gun and the next version will actually be 2.3."
Why doesn't the summary include a picture of the gingerbread statue after making a specific reference to it?
Anyways, this has a small picture and a video with it actually being unveiled (I couldn't find a better article with an actual pic): http://www.pcr-online.biz/news/34973/Google-unveil-Android-Gingerbread
Each major version of Android is named after a dessert, and in alphabetical order, so Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, and now Gingerbread (with Honeycomb to come). When the Android team finishes the next version they celebrate by getting a big statue (in this case a gingerbread man) put on their front lawn.
How many apps actually have this compatibility problem? I mean I get that there are certain apps specifically for 1.5 and some for 2.0, but I must have downloaded and run at least 100 apps for my android phone and all of them have run just fine. And I'm running a HTC magic, which came with 1.5, never had 1.6 delivered, and I have rooted and upgraded to 2.2. It mostly runs fine btw, despite rubbish hardware with a few tweaks and compromises (no widgets), And as I said it runs everything just fine. In fact I'm sure if some HTC engineers took some time to optimise v2.2 for the device it would run great. The fact is the Android platform isn't nearly ready for mainstream consumption (no way I recommend it to non-techies) and needs a heap more development, so regular version updates should be expected for some time. With enough iterations, Android will become a very powerful and flexible portable computer OS, so bring the new versions on!