Android Gingerbread Features Predictions
by Antonio Wells
Oct 24, 2010 10:00 AM –
I’ll go on a ledge with this article, put on my Gartner hat and make a few predictions about Google’s next major Android software release confirmed as Gingerbread. We saw loose reports from a Google engineer tweets about Gingerbread being version 2.3. However irrelevant to the version number, what is concrete is that Google just added a Gingerbread statue in front of their headquarters. I’ll make a few Gingerbread features predictions and even Gingerbread release date. Lets see how accurate I am…
Predicted Gingerbread Release Date
Gingerbread will release to on or before November 11, the SDK should be open for thirsty developers to play with and have fun and Google’s Nexus One phone will get OTA update roll-out within the weeks to follow. Of course we would have reported the leak and steps on how to manually update to Gingerbread for those on-the-edge techies.
Predicted Gingerbread Features
More Speed, More Robust, More Enterprise
Overall, the OS should receive benefit from more speed, become more robust and strengthen enterprise conformity. We saw Google showcase more speed with the unveiling of Froyo earlier this year at Google I/O, Gingerbread is only going to get faster. We’ll see more synergy with Android and Google Apps. Google has already been serious about Android’s enterprise capabilities, thus we’ll see more Microsoft Exchange rules supported plus the ability to locate, backup and remote wipe an Android phone from the web. Which segues into my next prediction…
Android Market
Android Market from web will finally launch! Offering account and apps management online with wireless sync and download of apps and content. Content purchased from Google Android Market will be able to stream to other Android powered devices such as tablets, TVs, cars, etc.
When the Android Market is released the next articles we’ll see are the comparison with other third party app stores, more specifically our partner AppBrain, which was started by ex-Googlers to alleviate the frustration of the lack of browsing and downloading Android Apps via the Web.
There will see new some gripes with the Market from developers regarding discovery. This is a common issue with any marketplace with a lot of inventory, but that’s what leading sites like ours is for right? There are some things the search giant will implement from a pragmatic perspective. The irony of poor search from a Google product will fade, we’ll see either predictive app results as you type or Google Instant features integrated with the search while browsing for apps. Google will allow the collection of more metadata to help with search including more screen shots and YouTube videos. Overall we’ll see some improvement here but much more work is needed.
Back to content…
Wireless Music & Video Service
Google already has partnerships with many of the world’s largest media brands so we’ll not only see the typical 10 million+ songs licensed as a music service but video and publication content as well. This is where we’ll see Netflicks for Android debut their service offering initially in the U.S.
User Interface
Although Google scoped design guru from Palm, we won’t see the massive user interface and user experience overhaul just yet but we will see some subtle nuances and see the direction of the changes to come.
Google Checkout and PayPal for Payment
We will finally he able to utilize more payment options, specially Paypal to pay for apps. This in addition to Google Checkout and carrier billing options should give much choice for payments.
We’ll revisit this in a few weeks to score my accuracy. In the meantime, lets take my predictions to the comments and discuss.