The Android 1.6 update will be delivered to customers over the coming days, and though it’s not considered to be a major upgrade to the operating system.
New features of Android 1.6 include:
- CDMA support will enable Android phones to launch on Verizon and Sprint.
- Quick Search Box enables search across multiple sources — such as browser bookmarks, contacts, and the web, directly from the home screen
- Launching the camera is now 39% faster, with a 28% improvement in the time from completing one shot to the next.
- A multi-lingual speech synthesis engine called Pico that allows any Android application to “speak” a string of text with an accent that matches the language. English (American and British accents), French, Italian, German and Spanish are currently supported. If you’re using a T-Mobile G1 or Dream device, you’ll need to download the SpeechSynthesis Data Installer from Android Market, which includes the “voices” needed by the text-to-speech engine.
- A new Virtual Private Network (VPN) control panel in Settings
- A new battery usage screen lets users see which apps and services are consuming battery power.
Windows Mobile 6.5 , due out in a few weeks, has a subtly retooled user interface, with more emphasis on making the UI easier to use and a much greater support for multi-touch screens. It also includes Internet Explorer Mobile 6, the first Microsoft mobile browser to incorporate a full HTML rendering engine.
The about-to-be-released Windows Mobile 6.5 was not the release Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer had hoped for in 2009, reports Network World. According to one tweat, Ballmer said he wished version 7 of the OS was ready now, instead of next year.
Meanwhile, Google has introduced a new Local Search for Mobile. It integrates with Google Maps and includes browseable categories. The new category browse feature makes it easy to find a place to rent bicycles, for example. Google is also launching Personalized Suggest for Android, iPhone and Palm WebOS, which makes it easy to repeat your past searches on the go.
