We’ve been hearing about the upcoming Android Gingerbread release in Q4 for a while now. And also how the new Android user interface will blow our socks off. Still, everyone’s been pretty sketchy about exact details of what’s actually coming to Android Gingerbread. Until now.
Mobile-review.com’s Eldar Murtazin just went and spilled a boatload of interesting details about the upcoming Android Gingerbread release. Don’t run searching for these details to his blog or his main site, you won’t find anything there yet.
Eldar did all the spilling in his Russian podcast “ Digestiv”. It’s audio only, so Google Translate won’t help you much. If you do not speak Russian, you’ll have to trust me on thisHer we go:
- Android 3.0 Gingerbread will be released in mid- October (around 15 -16th), 2010. First handsets shipping in November/December – for the Holiday Season.
- Minimum hardware requirements for Android 3.0 devices are: 1GHZ CPU, 512MB or RAM, displays from 3.5” and higher. (We all, of course, heard that Android handsets with 2GHz CPU's are coming)
- New 1280×760 resolution available for the devices with displays of 4” and higher. (Anyone thinking about Android tablets now? )
- Completely revamped user interface. If you want to get a feeling of what Android 3.0 Gingerbread UX is like, check out the Gallery App on Nexus One. The same overall feel, light animated transitions,etc. Natively, through all the UI.
- Android’s split into 2 branches becomes official. 3.0 for top of the line/high end devices. Cheap, low-end mass market handsets will keep Android 2.1/2.2
Eldar also confirmed my musings about the death of third party User Interface Shells like HTC Sense, MotoBlur, etc;. Android 3.0 basically kills the need for them.
Still, there’s some hope for third party vendors here – while Google takes over the UI on the high end, vendors get to keep their UI shells/improvements on mass market Android smartphones, running Eclair or Froyo.