Android 2.2 Froyo: everything you ever wanted to know
By Ross Miller 
posted May 21st 2010 2:25PM
posted May 21st 2010 2:25PM
What's new
The first thing you'll notice with Froyo is a slightly modified navigation bar that assimilates shortcuts for both the phone and web browser. The Google search bar has undergone a slight modification, too, letting you cater your search specifically to web, apps, or contacts -- and that's about it for home screen modifications. No extra wallpapers, no additional screens, no new shortcuts. As for new widgets, all we've seen are a tutorial box and a rotating ad for featured marketplace apps.
Tethering and portable hotspot
YouTube HQ (sort of)
Top row: Froyo (first with HQ enabled, then without; bottom row: Eclair (same settings on both screens)
The only other stock widget, aside from Google search, that had any noticeable change was YouTube, which now scrolls through a set of most viewed videos to entice and distract you on passing glances. The player itself, however, beams a shiny new "HQ" button on the bottom right of the screen. But before you go gloating to your EVO 4G-carrying pals, you should know that in our tests the higher-res option by and large matched the default (and thus far only) video option for Android 2.1 Eclair, and non-HQ was even more scaled down, and didn't even span the entire width of the 3.7-inch screen. And to think, the sight of that button alone gave us such jubilation. (Update: As a number of readers have pointed out, this change is nothing more than semantics -- the Nexus One does have the same low-quality option buried inside menus.)
External storage for apps
While support for apps on external storage has been confirmed Froyo (the Manage Applications screen is now divided amongst Downloaded, Running, All, and most importantly, "On SD card"), try as we might, we couldn't find a single program that'd let us use the "Move to SD card" functionality. That includes marketplace and third-party downloads -- we'll have to explore this one later.
Everything else
Some of the other highlights, briefly:
- Camera: Controls are now more streamlined within the viewing window and much easier to sift through.
- Gmail: Previous and Next navigation in every viewed message, and a much more colorful means of sifting through labels.
- Calendar: The large green bars that took up much of the calendar space have been thoroughly fine-tuned into blue segments more indicative of the actual hour of day for each event.
- Voice recognition settings: Does voice search have a perceived issue with your accent or colloquialisms? New options for voice recognition let you choose seven different dialects of English (US, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, India, and Generic), Mandarin Chinese, and Japanese. The latter worked quite well in testing, producing accurate Kanji for our horribly strewn together phrases.
- Security: Sick of locking your device with a pattern? PIN codes are now accepted.
- Car dock: A revamped interface spaces out the buttons, adds quick shortcuts to music and lighting adjustment, but decides it's probably for the best to disable the hardware home button in lieu of an easier-to-press "Exit car mode" screen key.
Flash Player 10.1
Benchmarks
So, does the new system run as silky smooth as earlier hinted at? In our tests, we were getting about the same Linpack scores as the early reports, which was over five times higher on Froyo than on Eclair -- and even more dramatic when you compare it with an Eclair-laden Motorola Droid. We saw similar results with a number of other benchmark tools, namely Sunspider and Benchmark Pi (unfortunately NeoCore, our favorite 3D test, kept crashing when we tried it).
| Droid (2.1) | Nexus One (2.1) | Nexus One (2.2) |
| Linpack (MFLOPS) | 4.53 | 6.928 | 39.72 |
| Sunspider (milliseconds) | 34,323 | 14,547 | 5,982 |
| Benchmark Pi (milliseconds) | 5,086 | 2,859 | 1,138 |
Notes: MFLOPS is millions of floating point operations per second (higher is better). Sunspider tests Javascript performance and Benchmark Pi measures calculations of the irrational number -- lower is better for both. All numbers shown are averaged from five tests apiece.
Of course, numbers are one thing, but how does it feel in practice? Frankly, we haven't seen that dramatic of a performance change. The full Engadget page consistently loaded a few seconds faster on Froyo, as did any other page we tried. That dovetails nicely with Google's claim that Android 2.2 features the fastest mobile browser in the world, made possible thanks to a fresh mobile-specific implementation of the V8 JavaScript engine already found in Chrome. Speaking of speed boosts, we also saw improvements in some of the more hardware-intensive games -- Raging Thunder II, for example. That said, fresh locations on Maps loaded just as fast on both versions, and we were hard pressed to find any other noticeable performance disparity.
After Froyo: what's next?
Tethering's for the birds -- how about whisking your favorite tracks to your pocket without cabling up? Google's purchase of a little firm called Simplify Media is making this feature possible, which uses a desktop component to push your iTunes music collection (or portions of your choosing) straight to your Android -powered device over the air. Google has only demonstrated this over WiFi so far, so we're anxious to give it a whirl and see how well it works over 3G -- assuming it works at all.
And while we're on the subject of magic through-the-cloud tricks, you'll also eventually be able to push apps from your computer's desktop to your phone. Simply selecting an app on your desktop and selecting it to transfer will cause it to be both sent to the phone and installed automatically. Considering that most app discovery seems to happen on the device, this might end up not having a lot of practical bearing -- but either way, it's pretty neat.
So, when is this stuff coming? Google's not saying -- it was presented in a section about what's "beyond Froyo" at I/O this week -- but we do know that it's targeting codename Gingerbread for the tail end of the year. That version (which could come to market as 2.3, 2.5, 3.0, or something else entirely) will also feature support for Google's newly-announced WebM video format that's designed to sidestep H.264 licensing concerns.
Update: Google now says it'll be rolling out "in the coming weeks."
Wrap-up
Sean Hollister and Chris Ziegler contributed to this report.
Isn't that the old 2.0.1 keyboard in the first picture?
@Tensai I think people skip reading articles just to be the first comments. Please read people... please...
*goes to read article*
@Tensai
No its the 2.1/2.2
the voice button changes to a comma when there is already a ddedicated voice button next to the search bar. The voice button will only appear in text fields
@Tensai
Google must be paying engadget! all the google posts ahhhhhh.
/sarcasm
@trainwrecka i would actually like to point out that this article did NOT tell me everything i want to know about FROYO...
Because i would like to know how do we get it on my HD2 and when can that be ready for me? Someone, anyone please make this happen... it would be like having an EVO without the 4g or sweet camera, im ok with that
@SteveyAyo : http://lmgtfy.com/?q=android+hd2
@Tensai I know it has other meanings, but Tensai means 'natural disaster' in Japanese. Kinda ironic hey.
@Tensai I would welcome a better power management ie, longer battery life. I could even welcome a low performance mode (available via settings) to make my RSS reading and web browsing experience longer. Opinions-
http://j.mp/froyo-android-impressions
The portable hotspot is all I was waiting for to be supported out the box. Waiting for a 2.2 device and I will buy it.
@Plazmic Flame
I wonder what that will mean for Sprint and other carrier's Hotspot plans.
@Plazmic Flame
It would be nice if it supported bluetooth tethering.
@DoctarPeppar
I 2nd that! BT tethering is excellent on battery life, great for casual browsing (i.e. speed isn't an issue if you're just loading up webpages), and great for when you don't have a USB cable around.Its one of the few things I'll miss when/if I eventually move from my X1 to an Android phone.
@DoctarPeppar
But this can already be added with small third party apps like EasyTether or PdaNet so Bluetooth tethering isn't the showstopper you're making it out to be.
@Luxury Guy
Is bluetooth better on battery life than wi-fi? It sure isn't anywhere near as fast....
@Plazmic Flame My Droid is rooted with the wireless teather app and I love it ... except for it kills my battery if overly used. Other then that, it works flawlessly, can't wait for it to be standard in 2.2
@crawdad689 Yea, its MUCH better on battery life. And speed isn't really an issue.
WiFi on average uses 32 mW
Bluetooth on uses a maximum of 2.5mW
As for speed, bluetooth allows a max speed of 3 Mbit/s
AT&T has a max speed of 3.6Mbit/s in most areas.
FYI I don't think 7.2 speeds have been rolled out yet on ATT, and most 3G phones doesn't even currently support it.
@Plazmic Flame
Why is it you have to wait for a new device to get 2.2? I thought Android was the "open" mobile OS. On Windows Mobile, people are usually running the new operating system on their much older phones even before the new one is out!
So I'm curious, why doesn't every existing Android phone get updated (by Google or by ROM cooks) to the newest version?
@Tes
Sorry dude, I didn't know -- didn't mean to make it out to be a "showstopper" -- just wondering why there's no built in support for bluetooth tethering. As above have stated, it's better on battery life, for _both_ devices -- the one doing the routing (cell -> local clients) and the clients as well. Speed is a non issue, 3Mbps is more than enough bandwidth.
@sonicyoof
It does. Most people just aren't going to bother going to a site like xda and downloading and flashing their own ROM. You can brick your phone, at the very least you will lose all of your data if you don't back it up. That's the caveat with installing custom roms.
There was a story here just this morning that Froyo's already been ported to two phones from the developer release. I guess you can go download those roms right now.
I run a custom WinMo 6.5 rom on my phone and I love it, but the process is not for everyone. It's even more involved than jailbreaking an iPhone, and how many people do you personally know that have done that?
@sonicyoof That is quite the un-educated post. Before commenting on Android articles, I suggest you start searching for Android ROMS in the future. I was running 2.1 on my Droid well before Verizon released their official update and I'd bet you my paycheck I'll be running 2.2 on my phone well before Verizon releases it's update to the masses if they even do. BTW, my son's Winmo Samsung is running 6.1 and according to all the research I did on the subject, there's no way it can handle 6.5 so it's not running the most current version of Winmo. Hardware in phones continue to get better and it's crazy to think a 3 year old phone no matter which OS you are talking about will be able to smoothly run the latest OS released by Apple, RIM, Android, Winmo, etc.
@sonicyoof
I'm waiting for 2.2 before I get a new device because I currently don't have an Android device but want to get one. I could have gotten one sometime ago and rooted it but i'm just not into doing that stuff with my phones.
@Plazmic Flame I have no doubt Verizon will ax this feature as their current terms of agreement currently does not allow for tethering unless you buy a "Mobile Broadband" plan, not to be confused with a smartphone's data plan.
I want this on my soon-to-be Evo with Sense =[.
@MegaJapan I fear that with all these new android phones, soon it'll become the PC of the handset world. I think android should be limited to a very few select phones every year, so it can be more stable and for better compatibility. Much like how apple does it with their phone and computers.
@Jamesg That is not what open source is.
As a consumer, you can pick out an AAA handset. Someone who wants support and speed should get a Incredible or Droid, not a Cliq XT or Backflip and then complain that they don't get as fast support as a Nexus One. Some devices are made, thrown into the market, and exist as a oneshot for basic users. Others are for power users who expect the best. What you're describing already exists if you ignore the cheap handsets that don't target anyone interested enough to read a tech blog.
@Jamesg I'm sure many android fans would LOVE to see it be the PC of the handset world. Available on over 85% of all devices with Apple sitting around 10% market share.
@MegaJapan HTC's 2010 phones are suppose to get it first. I'm guessing Evo will be after, or with, the release of 2.2 for the Droid Incredible and Desire..
Win
Which would be the best Android handset to use with AT&T's network? T-Mobile still hasn't rolled out 3G in Puerto Rico! (So slow)
@xavierpr14 Nexus One.
@xavierpr14 Canadian Milestone
@xavierpr14 Err..when I was in Puerto Rico in later 2008 and my G1 had 3g. I guess maybe it's not everywhere?
@xavierpr14 Don't get a Milestone like MrGlitch said, it has a locked bootloader, and updates lag like 2 months behind the Droid. Get a Nexus One whilst you still can unsubsidised. Best thing I've ever done.
my existing contract ends in august :(
@coolkams03 Which will probably be when the first handsets using them comes out. Cheer up :)
@coolkams03
That's what the ROM community is for!
Who cares what your OEM supports!
I bet I'll have 2.2 on my Droid before the first 2.2 native phone is even released!
Exclamation point!
its a great update date. keep the treats coming google
I want to know when my Nexus One will be blessed with its PWN!
Yes. Evolution at its finest, so many cool features here. Google really delivered a lot for a 2.X update. New music player ftw.
@JONNNathannn
I find it hilarious this is just an evolution (whether truthful or not) yet the giant iTouch is touted as somehow revolutionary.
@Shooter McGavin iPod Touch. . .iTouch is a KIRF PMP rip off. . .lol
What I want to know is the release date!
@joe23521 Its already released. Its being pushed to Nexus One phones now.
@sirmeili
Is there an official source for that? I haven't heard of any Nexus One receiving it OTA yet, only in custom roms.
@wraith404 Now I can't find it. The only official sources I can find say what the article says "in the next few weeks".
Sorry if i got anyone's hopes up! (seriously!)
All your Flash are belong to Android.
@Eternity
Hahahaha!!! Good one.
@Eternity all your Internets are belong to Adobe
Not everything I wanted to know! When can I have it?!?
@PapaSteveZ In the coming weeks.
Whatever that means ;_;