Part of the allure of Motorola's Droid smartphone is that it's the first, and currently only, device built upon Android 2.0 ("Eclair"). While Droid users are treated to a new Web browser, new personal navigation features, and new contact list structure, the rest of the Android devices on the market run Android 1.6, also known as "Donut," which began to appear last October.
There has been no official word about which existent Android devices will be able to upgrade to 2.0, and today, we begin to see a bit more of that dreaded Android fragmentation as both versions got updates to their SDK components.
Since Donut was released, the Android SDK has supported components which represent each version of the Android platform. In other words, if a developer wants to make an app optimized for Eclair, he can use the 2.0 component for the SDK, which customizes the development environment for Eclair apps.
Android 2.0.1 rev. 1 includes several bug fixes and behavior changes, including updates to Bluetooth control and discovery, and new APIs for sync adaptors, which can create two-way contact syncing with any backend.
Android 1.6 rev. 2 fixes some screen size compatibility issues and updates the Linux Kernel to 2.6.29, to "match kernel on commercially-available Android-powered devices."
The updated Android SDK components can be obtained on the Android developer site.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
