January 6th, 2011 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Platforms: AndroidOS | No Comments »
Today, details around Android’s roadmap surfaced on the internet as Google published a video about Android 3.0 and Dutch website Tweakers.net accidentally got handed a SonyEricsson Arc with Android 2.4 on it.
Reporters from Tweakers.net were promised a hands-on with the SonyEricsson Arc. The salesrep accidentally gave the reporters a model with an early build of Android 2.4 instead of the regular demo models.
The problem for the reporters was the UX interface SonyEricsson installed on the Android 2.4 interface. This makes it a bit unpredictable to see what is part of the OS and what is part of the UI. One of the features discovered is the possibility to switch on or off noise reduction. The noise reduction functionality is already found in 2.3 but wasn’t optional at that release. There is also a function for video chats. Probably for Google Talk. This is also to be seen in the Android 3.0 presentation.
With this leaking out, it is predictable Google will be having two branches of Android for now. 3.X for tablets and 2.X for smartphones though both are likely to be merged when the tablet version has matured.