This past weekend I upgraded my Motorola Droid to Android 2.2 (As of this writing the most recent version of Android), which goes by the name Froyo (short for Frozen Yogurt). Here are some of the cool new features that the upgrade included and one awesome one that it did not.
Cool: Google Voice Actions
This is an upgrade to the Google App called Voice Search and gives you the ability to create a Text Message from scratch using Voice commands. This differs from the original Voice to Text ability of Android in that you are now not just writing the message with your voice but now also choosing who to send it to. For example you say “Send Text to Andrew Gertig, Hey Andrew how are you” and it will create a text message to Andrew Gertig with the message “Hey Andrew how are you”. Works like a charm.
Cool: Automatic Updating of Apps
One of the big pain points with Android up until Froyo has been the constant updates that application developers push out. I should know, I pushed out quite a few in the first few days and weeks of my app Droimote being on the market, which I’m sure was annoying to my few downloaders. Now you can check a box on each app you download that will allow it to automatically update when an update is available.
Cool: Move Apps to the SD Card
This has immediately freed up a ton of space of my internal memory, especially being able to move Springpad to the SD card has been great. Though the associated increase in speed has not occurred yet, if it has it has been imperceptible. Note: not available with all apps, developers must make this option available.
Cool: 2 More Home Screens
I finally have 5 home screens as opposed to the 3 I was limited to before. This is huge because I had just run out of room, and because I don’t like having app icons filling up each screen.
Not Cool: No WiFi Hotspot
The Droid is not being enabled with WiFi hotspot as the Droid X has. Boo.
Not Cool: Some apps are more buggy and crash prone
I use an app called Touchdown for Android that allows me to do Microsoft Exchange server mail on my Droid fairly well, except that since the upgrade to Android 2.2 the app has essentially crashed (Force Close) every time I attempt to do something in the app, quite frustrating. Also, Hootsuite, Twitter for Android, and Paypal feel like they have a right to stay open all the time because there is supposedly more processing power available. In general I think that apps should not run in the background unless I want them to do so and should not open themselves on their own unless I give them permission to.
