Earlier this week, Google announced new details about the next version of the Android platform. Based on the Cupcake development branch, Android 1.5 will come with a number of new features.
Among the new features, you will find:
- Soft keyboard support, including both portrait and landscape orientation modes and a dictionary for custom words
- New home screen widgets, including an analog clock, a calendar, a music player, a picture frame, and search
- Support for video recording and playback (MPEG-4 & 3GP formats)
- Stereo Bluetooth support (A2DP and AVCRP profiles)
- An improved browser with the latest Webkit and Squirrelfish Javascript engines, a unified Go and Search box, and copy-and-paste in the browser
- A new Linux kernel (version 2.6.27)
- New features in a number of Google applications
The release will also offer a number of bug fixes and refinements, including performance (including faster camera start-up and image capture, faster GPS location acquisition and smoother browser page scrolling) and user interface improvements (including refinements to all core UI elements, accelerometer-based application rotations, Gmail, Calendar, and Email).
Google has not announced exactly when Android 1.5 will be released but the SDK is expected at the end of the month. I expect that the OS release would not follow much later.