This is an effort from my side to consolidate everything about Android Froyo with respect to Nexus One. It is mainly concentrated towards listing the features/fixes that we have seen in Froyo that weren’t announced in Google I/O, things that work with nexus one, things that don’t and possible fixes/workarounds known, what the announced features actually feel like in real use etc. Will keep updating this post as I get more info, get more fixes, etc. Please do let me know if I’ve missed something or there is some new development that should be updated here.
UPDATED:
27-MAY-2010 (Added things missing since Eclair and few other notes)
25-MAY-2010 (Added market missing apps fix, 802.11n and other features)
24-MAY-2010 (Added more un-announced features/fixes/changes)
To start with, just a quick recap of things that were announced and their look/feel/working in real use (First is the announced feature and then after ":" is the effect that we see)
|
Feature/Fix |
Real Effects seen by us |
Remarks
|
|
JIT for Dalvik JVM |
Apps are quite fast, visible difference animation effects, scrolling, games etc |
None
|
|
Better Exchange support with calendar sync/GAL /remote wipe/account-auto-discovery/administation |
Works as advertised |
Exchange support still not upto the mark. e.g. No support for selective folder sync, subfolders are not synced automatically, no phone number/location for GAL contacts, no “move to folder”, no search, etc.
|
|
Backup Application data/settings/history in cloud |
Yet to experience |
I’ve enabled the settings for this but haven’t switched to another ROM yet or figured out how to test it in some other way.
|
|
Cloud Messaging to activate intents |
Works as advertised |
very cool feature. Try out this chrome extension to send links from chrome to your phone: Chrome2Phone
|
|
USB Tethering and Portable Wireless Hotspot |
Works as advertised |
Real skin-saver. Works great and easily.
|
|
Javascript V8 Engine for Android Browser |
Much faster javascript execution |
Much better browsing experience noted.
|
|
HTML5 support/Device Access (Camera/Accelerometer etc) through Browser |
Work In Progress. See Remarks |
Contrary to what many people tell you, this is still not there. HTML5 support is an ongoing thing and device access through browser would be present in Gingerbread (Next Android iteration, supposedly 3.0)
|
|
Better Voice Input Integration |
"Seems" better. |
Now, I don’t have any tangible means to measure this but it seems to be working relatively better and it even seems to understand my non-US accent much better.
|
|
Flash 10.1 beta support |
Works as advertised |
Almost every flash functionality in all sites I visited work ok. Please note that you need to install Flash from market as it doesn’t come "built-in". Just search for "Adobe" in market.
|
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Install apps on SD card |
Not tested. |
This feature requires support from apps to integrate this and currently no apps support it. There is a command that you can run from adb shell "adb shell pm setInstallLocation 2" but it will cause "all" your apps to install to the card plus users report problems on missing apps as SD card is not available immediately at boot up.
|
|
Better global search integration for apps |
Works as advertised |
Now, apps can allow search to search within their data. Right now the official twitter app supports this and you can search your timeline from the main android search itself.
|
|
Update all apps in one click/automatic updates |
Works as advertised |
None. |
|
Stream music from PC to phone |
Yet to test. |
None. As pointed out by Hugo, it is not clear yet that this is supposed to be part of Froyo or GingerBread. |
|
Improved crash reporting to developers |
Works as advertised |
Really useful to the developers as it sends complete report about the environment and stack trace etc.
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|
Purchase music/apps on android market and push directly to device Over The Air |
Yet to test |
New market website that allows this hasn’t appeared yet. As pointed out by Hugo, it is not clear yet that this is supposed to be part of Froyo or GingerBread. |
Now, we move on to things that weren’t announced but we found them in the updates. This may be because these pieces were too small or specific to nexus one to have warranted a place in the Google I/O keynote.
|
Feature/Fix |
Remarks
|
|
Erratic/Crazy Touchscreen behaviour fixes |
This is about the erratic behaviour of the touchscreen that sometimes all the touches were being registered at the wrong places and one had to tap twice on the power button to fix it. So far, it seems that this has been fixed. |
|
Multi-touch fixes |
This seems to be a hardware problem and there are no "fixes" to it as such but there seems to be a new touchscreen API in the 2.2 Froyo SDK that google is encouraging developers to use to alleviate this issue somewhat by doing some filtering/scaling within the Android framework. |
|
SMS App fix |
The messaging app had a nagging issue that many times it showed the first few words of a text message as the sender instead of the actual number/sender. This seems to be fixed now. |
|
Capacitive Touch Button fix |
Nexus one was quite famous for its mal-functioning cap-touch buttons that didn’t seem to register the touches of a user. We had to press slightly above them most times to register a touch. This seems to be fixed now and feels much better. |
|
Multi-Color Trackball |
The nexus one trackball can now display multiple colors instead of just white. e.g. a nee facebook update received makes it glow blue |
|
Better Camera/Gallery Interface |
The new camera/gallery interface is just awesome and much easier to use. Feature wise I think the new options are focus settings, zoom settings and storage location quick switch, flash on during video recording for night video capture. I must also mention that auto-flash works much better now as earlier it used to almost always fire even in quite ample light but that maybe just me. |
| Bigger Camera Pics | Somehow the pics are a bit heavier in size. Earlier a max resolution, finest pic used to weigh around 900-950 kB for me but now they are around 1.09-1.1 MB |
| Keyboard Quick Access to numbers/punctuation | Now, you don’t need to switch to the number mode by pressing “123?” key to input number/punctutation. Just press anywhere on the keyboard and drag it towards the preview/suggestion bar upwards and two new rows will appear with numbers and punctuation. |
| Library Projects | This is something for the devs. Now, you can create library projects so that you can make a library and share it across your different apps. e.g. you can use same library of code for your paid and free versions, etc. |
| wi-fi n | yes, it supports 802.11n now  |
| End call with power button | You can enable this in accessibility settings |
| vcard support | Nexus one can now handle vcards that someone sends through sms or bluetooth for contact information |
Now, on our list are things/apps that don’t work or issues that plague the new update. We will also be listing the workarounds/fixes if known for them.
|
Issues |
Fix/Workaround/Remarks
|
|
Seesmic app keeps giving "Connection error" with froyo |
Simple fix is to delete your existing account in seesmic. Setup a new account and uncheck "Secure connection" in advanced setup. |
|
Swype doesn’t work |
Just uninstall swype and swype installer and download/install them again and it will work. |
|
Pure Calendar doesn’t work |
New versions have been released to make them work |
|
Android market doesn’t show a lot of apps |
As of now, android market is not showing a lot of paid/copy-protected apps on the market for froyo users. There is a workaround for root users available here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=687371 |
|
Worse radio/3G performance |
Several users at modaco/xda-devs report worse performance with 3G. They say downgrading back to previous radio fixes this but try it at your own risk. |
Things missing since previous versions (i.e. Eclair):
(Thanks to Marc for suggestion)
|
Things missing |
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No “.com” button on the default Android keyboard |
The final part of this post is for things that were rumored to be in the Froyo update for nexus one but aren’t present:
|
Rumored Feature/fix (Not present in Nexus One Froyo Update) |
|
FM Radio Receiver |
|
FM Transmitter |
That’s it for now. This is a huge post and I must have missed out on a lot of things for sure. So, if you remember something that I have missed or something has changed over past few days after I wrote/updated this post, please do let me know in comments.
[...] and their workarounds, and features that were rumored but didn't come etc).. Here is the link: Android Froyo And Nexus One: Everything We Know Mods, I'm not sure if it is ok to post the link. If it is deemed not ok, please feel free to [...]
Do the capacitive buttons turn off when in the desk dock or the clock mode is running?
I don’t have a dock so ca’t say for sure but I tried putting it in clock mode, car home mode etc and the cap touch buttons never go off
[...] 2: Shantanu Goel has been testing and recording all the features of Froyo on his Nexus One, tabulating things that work, things that don’t and [...]
great writeup! i’ve had a db gain of about 10 w the new radio. it seems to be different user exp phone to phone.
“Stream music from PC to phone”
“Purchase music/apps on android market and push directly to device Over The Air”
– I’m pretty sure both these features were for a future version of Android after Froyo. Certainly the different Music app interface that was demoed in the keynote is not present in Froyo.
I noticed that Google Talk app no longer has settings for the refresh interval (the shortest was a brutally long 5 minutes); I’m assuming that Google Talk app uses the c2dm stuff now.
I wonder if a section listing things we lost would be appropriate. I did notice that the .com button was now missing from the keyboard.
Thanks for the list !
Very informative
About better exchange support. I agree on “not upto the mark” – the feature I miss most is ability to search for contacts phone numbers…
@Hugo: It is unclear as of now whether these features are for froyo or gingerbread..News floating around is that these desktop and web counterparts pieces which are required to make it work will be released around froyo official release (Current one we have has been confirmed to be a release candidate build and official build will be FRF86)
@Darren: Thanks. I’ll check this out. I thought google talk already did push using the xmpp mechanism available only for google apps..But I can be wrong.. will check more on this.
@Marc: Nice idea. Will add this.
@Jahmon, jjkemp: Thanks for the comments
On the list of things fixed is the BT handsfree phone issue. (Some cars have BT phone capability. When you start the car, if the phone has been paired with it, and on and BT enabled, it connects automatically to the car, downloads the address book, and from then behaves as you would expect a handsfree phone to).
Problem with Nexus 1 is that it does not work with many cars
Froyo is supposed to “provide greater compatibility for BT car kits”.
Anyoue any experience here?
Another thing fixed – if you are watching a youtube video, and switch to a different app/home screen, the video is paused at its location. Earlier, if you switched back to youtube, you would see the screen with the list of videos.
+1 on this. Wish the .com button wasn’t removed.
Hey, Shantanu…great info here! I still don’t seem to have any luck sending/receiving vCards on my Nexus One (running Froyo). Any tips?
How do we change the trakball light color when there is a notification??
Hi,
I don’t understand how wi-fi become ‘n’ without hardware update ?
Thank you
Pavel
@Pavel: Nexus One always had a wifi-n chip. In fact, google had even stated Nexus one having n in early promos. It was probably left out during release because of some software/driver issues and the fixed driver was released with Froyo update.