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