The integrated SIP stack look excellent, but from http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-2.3-highlights.html:
"Support for the platform's SIP and internet calling features on specific devices is determined by their manufacturers and associated carriers."
This is disappointing, but not unexpected.
The new audio support is the most exciting thing to me here. Multitouch interfaces have such enormous potential for musical applications that have not even begun to be explored.
iPhones and such have long had the ability to drive PC-based instruments by sending MIDI or OSC signals through bluetooth or wifi, I have been to many gigs in the last year and seen people using iPads running touchOSC in their performance setups; however the high specs seen in current devices are easily enough to run fullblown synths, samplers etc on their own. This will open up the burgeoning art of musicians creating their own instruments to a much wider audience.
We're going to be hearing some pretty fun noises over the next year :)
The new NDK lets you write an application entirely in C, no need to get your hands dirty with Java at all. Of course this only works with android-9 (2.3), so if you want to write a game that people can actually play you'll still need a Java wrapper, but going forward you can bet that a lot more game ports will be Gingerbread-only.
This page discusses the highlights over 2.2:
http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-2.3-highlights.html
Here's a quick summary from the SDK release notes:
* Alarm clock APIs
* ability to detect first install time and last update time of an app
* Download manager API
* Mixable audio effects API
* A lot more locales (including indic language support)
* SIP VOIP support
* Front camera support
* 5-point multi-touch API
* Barometer
* Gyroscope
* NFC support (near field comminucation) - can interact using high frequency wireless communication with other stuff with NFC chips. Wikipedia has a pic of a phone interacting with a smart poster.
Can anyone throw some more light on NFC stuff and also why does a phone need a barometer?
Here's a great reddit post from the author of StrictMode: http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/eh2jf/gingerbread_a...
FUCKING FINALLY, Audio access from native code. This is going to be awesome.
Sensor API now supports a barometer? Are they paying their dues to Gene Roddenberry descendent's yet?
SIP-based VOIP
I wish they added partition encryption through the kernel (LUKS / dm_crypt).
So...any word on when Android 2.3 will be available over the wire for Nexus 1? Surprised this wasn't mentioned.
Wait, the NFC implementation is receive-only?
Doesn't this preclude using your phone as an NFC payment device (which would be transmit, not receive)?
Can someone confirm if I'm parsing this correctly:
"An NFC Reader application lets the user read and interact with near-field communication (NFC) tags. For example, the user can “touch” or “swipe” an NFC tag that might be embedded in a poster, sticker, or advertisement, then act on the data read from the tag. A typical use would be to read a tag at a restaurant, store, or event and then rate or register by jumping to a web site whose URL is included in the tag data. NFC communication relies on wireless technology in the device hardware, so support for the platform's NFC features on specific devices is determined by their manufacturers."
Any details on WebM support? I see it listed as a feature, but no specific API for it. I have an app where it would be very useful to turn a bunch of images into a video file, but I haven't found a reasonable way to do that and was hoping WebM would help.
I remember discussing gestures and NFC back at Motorolas conference the day the iPhone 2g launched in the UK and back then all of us thought NFC would happen in the next 12 months! Glad to see its finally arriving, though this patent is going to prove interesting http://www.nearfieldcommunicationsworld.com/2010/12/03/35337...
Still no GPU accel for the GUI?
Bouncy scrolling too. Yay.
Finally I no longer need to use my clunky Nexus One trackball to pick text to copy/paste. Finally!
Anyone want to help us integrate NFC into our Android app?
What's a SIP account?
Finally. Google waited until the telcos told so to enable voip.
Remember most telcos a while ago removing the unlimited data plan? And apple forcing skipe to only using wifi on all platforms.
Truth that google allowed work arounds for being evil this time... you could use sip with the buggy sip app. And you could even get free sip from google voice if you had an old gizmoproject account.
Love how you can't read the android site in a android phone
Unless you send a android user agent, then it changes most of the css to enable it. Really a dumb move
Description of a new developer feature named Strict Mode from Brad Fitzpatrick (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Fitzpatrick): http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/eh2jf/gingerbread_a...
Really neat how they are dogfooding and collecting metrics on performance from all the employees walking around with dev builds.