A leak provided by Mobile-review’s Eldar Murtazin has confirmed some concrete system requirements for Android 3.0 Gingerbread. His information confirms what has been expected; Gingerbread is going to be a major release for the Android platform. Here’s the summary, translated from Murtazin’s podcast “Digestiv” by unwiredview.com’s Staska…
Android 3.0 Gingerbread will be released in mid- October (around 15 -16th), 2010. First handsets shipping in November/December – for the Holiday Season.
Minimum hardware requirements for Android 3.0 devices are: 1GHZ CPU, 512MB of RAM, displays from 3.5” and higher. (We all, of course, heard that Android handsets with 2GHz CPU’s are coming)
New 1280×760 resolution available for the devices with displays of 4” and higher. (Anyone thinking about Android tablets now? )
Completely revamped user interface. If you want to get a feeling of what Android 3.0 Gingerbread UX is like, check out the Gallery App on Nexus One. The same overall feel, light animated transitions,etc. Natively, through all the UI.
Android’s split into 2 branches becomes official. 3.0 for top of the line/high end devices. Cheap, low-end mass market handsets will keep Android 2.1/2.2
This is the first really juicy information we have yet heard about Gingerbread; though some of it will come as a disappointment to certain users. To clarify; Android 3.0 Gingerbread will not support devices with processors clocked at less than 1GHz; essentially barring all but the highest end of the current generation’s smart phones. While community-modified ports are likely to occur for some sub-1GHz devices, to expect them to run Gingerbread at anything but a snail’s pace is probably wishful thinking. The list of Android phones currently and shortly available that meet Gingerbread’s demands, below:
- Droid X
- Droid 2
- Nexus One
- EVO 4G
- Galaxy S (And Pro)
- Incredible
A short list indeed. Google’s plans to make Android 2.1/2.2 the "economy” operating systems seems fair given the Android team’s breakneck-pace release cycle. Android 2.2 has barely begun to distribute to devices, with some of the above Gingerbread-compatible phones not even having a Froyo ETA. This does indicate that Froyo will probably take a previously unforeseen development strategy over the next year, one which will focus on providing compatibility to more low-end handsets.
The timing of Gingerbread’s release coincides well with Verizon’s plans to roll out its 4G network and phones, and Verizon appears to have positioned itself ideally to release a truly new generation of 4G LTE phones that could be running Gingerbread out of the box; and starting on Black Friday, no less.
Credit: Mobile-review.com via unwiredview via Gizmodo