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Christine

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31 Comments

  1. 1

    Clifton Tarpy

    The more I read about 2.2, the more I want it! I suppose the newness of the EVO will have to hold me over until 2.2 shows up for it.

  2. 2

    Gina Trapani

    I’m torn between the EVO and my Nexus One now. The EVO is the superior hardware, and the Sense UI is really nice. But 2.2 is pretty awesome, too. Thankfully my Google Voice number works on them both so I can switch at will.

  3. 3

    David Giesberg

    Wave does appear to be working for me, but I did get the browser warning when I went to http://wave.google.com. Still pretty rough around the edges, but super handy!

  4. 4

    Jacob Roeland

    You know, everybody is getting so happy about 2.2 coming and I’m still stuck on Cupcake. I started to get real happy when I learned that we’re going to get 2.1 in late June. Yeah it’s repeated old news about fragmentation but seriously I just wish Google would do something.

  5. 5

    Kyle Lippard

    @Jacob Roeland Why are you still on cupcake? It’s my favorite of the desserts, but not of the builds. Cyanogen’s Eclair build is stable and usable, so Root already πŸ˜› It works pretty well on my G1 only thing is battery life, and that may just be the age of my battery. Anyway.

  6. 6

    David Giesberg

    Oh also, what’s the story with the Music app and streaming music? I thought that was supposed to be Froyo (not Gingerbread) – or perhaps a release for the interim?

  7. 7

    erier2003

    Question and tip.

    Question: Are you able to do the portable hotspot and USB tethering stuff using just your normal data plan? I thought I read somewhere that Verizon was going to charge extra for Android 2.2 tethering. (I know you don’t use Verizon because you’re on the Nexus One, but I figured T-Mobile and Verizon might have similar policies here.)

    Tip: The text-selection process can be a pain, but I’ve found that some apps (including Browser and Gmail) allow you to select text with a “keyboard shortcut” of sorts. The default is Menu Button + E.

    (Related tip: You can assign “keyboard shortcuts” to applications in the settings menu. They use the Search button with a letter. Search + B defaults to opening the Browser.)

  8. 8

    Chuan Beng Tay

    The Car Home screen has been updated too πŸ™‚

  9. 9

    Cemil Kor

    I like the fact that when the phone is on the dock and you receive a call it automatically activates the speaker phone.

    I don’t like the fact that you can not completely put the phone in silent mode. It used be that if you keep pressing the volume down button you would eventually put the phone in vibrate mode and then completely silent mode. Now you can choose whether to vibrate or not when it is in silent mode.

    Also, Update All (Applications) only works because the OS feels –runs?– faster. My single favorite new feature so far.

  10. 10

    Jacob Roeland

    @Kyle Lippard I would but I’m scared to screw it up too bad. Plus Cyanogen doesn’t support the Hero.. But it’s all good. I can wait a little while longer.

  11. 11

    Adam Lombard

    @Jacob Roeland I have the Hero from sprint, we got the upgrade, its just not over the air. A sprint store is the fastest way but you can do it yourself with htc sync and the dl from sprint/htc. I did mine Thursday (it came out wed shortly after noon)

  12. 12

    Jacob Roeland

    @Adam Lombard I’m not on the Sprint network. I’m on Cellular South. Do you think it would be the same?

  13. 13

    Isman Tanuri

    I have not seen anyone mentioned this: the most simplest and ‘about time!’ fix in Froyo is the Nexus One’s touch menu buttons! No more touching slightly above the icons, works perfectly now but have to re-learn this move πŸ™‚

  14. 14

    martin.brook

    @Jacob Is cellular south a GSM network? If so, VillainROM (http://www.villainrom.co.uk) is an excellent choice for 2.1.

    Also, the application manager section appears to suggest that apps can now be installed on the SD card – is this a new feature? I don’t think this is possible in 2.1, is it?

  15. 15

    Matt Brodeur

    “Zoom isn’t available for the video camera”

    On 2.1 on my Incredible I can zoom before I start recording. Just can’t change it once you press the record button. Is that different now? Seems dumb to have taken that away.

  16. 16

    Abhijeet Bhalerao

    I am on AT&T and I was able to do the manual update. Faced no problems with the OS and got all the new features. The portable Wi-Fi spot worked great too.
    But, some of the apps refused to work. Could not log into Seesmic, the pure widget series did not work etc. I guess the app makers need time to update their apps.

  17. 17

    Bolero

    @Gina Trapani Use Nexus one with a custom ROM. I use the MoDaCo ROM with Sense UI on my N1. Works great.

  18. 18

    nocturnal9

    The GMail select bit isn’t new, it’s just now, uh, “supported”. If you had a keyboard in 2.0+ (DROID), you could hold down Shift while dragging your finger and it would select and copy, much like in the browser. But it’s a little buggy; hopefully they’re really supporting and fixing it for 2.2.

  19. 19

    Gerry Winkler

    @Gina

    I looked down at my Nexus One today and noticed that the track ball was flashing red. I have a non rooted N1. I updated to 2.2 this weekend and apparently they unlocked that feature. The reason it was glowing red was because sipdroid had failed to connect. I looked in the features and there was an option for a blue led flash for a missed call. I guess it will be up to third party apps to add different colors to the track ball.

    I just thought I’d share.

  20. 20

    Luigi Montanez

    The Twitter integration came with the official Twitter app, not with Froyo. So I get to see my contact’s latest tweet on my DROID on 2.1 right now.

  21. 21

    Wysz

    Multiple calendars is the big feature for me. I have two accounts with calendars (a work one on Google Apps and a personal one on Gmail), and now I can finally see them both from the calendar app on my phone.

  22. 22

    steppek

    I use gmail for my personal email and also have Exchange from work. Exchange setup was cake! (pun intended) Also supported security policy from my Exchange server requiring a pin to log into the phone. Worked Perfectly.

    By the way, you can set up gmail as an Exchange Active Server. Using the server m.google.com and your username (without the @gmail.com) and pass…works. I know since I set up my iPad with gmail as Exchange so I don’t need iTunes to sync Contacts and Calendar. πŸ™‚

  23. 23

    Jesse Newcomb

    Gina can u give us your review of the EVO I have one reserved and I would like to know what I am getting into.

  24. 24

    Mark Linford

    I’m really impressed with the browser speedups. I ran the Spider test on Froyo and Eclair (on the EVO 4G):

    Froyo: http://bit.ly/aUoa05
    Eclair: http://bit.ly/bWPs1e

    Basically, there’s an average of over 2x speed improvement. Some tests were almost 10x faster!

    It’s not just benchmarks, either. The browser experience is an order of magnitude better.

  25. 25

    Daniel Bentley

    The Hulu issue is on Hulu’s side. They recognise the device as a mobile device and assume it can’t play the video content. There’s a debug hack to get around it.

    I can’t wait for the HTC Sense devices to get 2.2, I just hope it isn’t too long!

  26. 26

    Jacob Roeland

    @ martin.brook No we’re CDMA. So yeah I guess I’m just royally screwed til June. What’s funny though is last night, I cannot lie, I dreamed I had a Nexus One running Froyo. Oh that was a sweet dream.

  27. 27

    seguetonowhere

    Just caught this thread, but my favorite feature is on the keyboard, if you slide your finger up off the top of the keyboard, you get a couple more rows of keys, one for common punctuation (but not parens, for some reason) and another for numbers. Way quicker than holding the “.” key.

  28. 28

    Allan Tépper

    For those of us who constantly need to input text in more than one language, Froyo also facilitates switching the keyboard layout and/or associated language (for spell checking) directly from the keyboard. This feature was available in the iPhone from day one, but something that in Android has required a 3rd-party app before the arrival of Froyo.

  29. 29

    blog.3dbloke.com/

    I recently received the Froyo OTA update on my N1. Very smooth and painless.

    One thing I’ve noticed is that the N1 no longer switches out of standby when I remove the power cable, which I see as a definite improvement.

    One other point: I use the Swype official beta (1.56.30) and it stopped working after the Froyo update. I uninstalled Swype and then re-ran the installer to bring it back. OK now.

  30. 30

    blog.3dbloke.com/

    …and the Display now has the option to Auto-adjust its brightness. This is nice; before Froyo I always found it necessary to remember to manually change to a brighter setting before venturing outdoors.

  31. 31

    Jeff

    What I like:

    Gmail app…can now make the default text size bigger.

    Lock screen…can use a PIN or password instead of pattern.

    ONE CALENDAR!

    Contacts…sort by last name.

    Bluetooth voice dialing.

    Screen will rotate to landscape in BOTH directions.

    Long press on home shows you last 8 apps instead of 6.

    Long press on launcher shows thumbnails of all your screens.

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