During a Russian podcast, Mobile Review personality Eldar Murtazin leaked some rumors about Google’s upcoming Android 3.0 release, Gingerbread. According to Murtazin, the version will drop mid-October and be pre-loaded on devices shipping in November or December. Among the purported technical requirements is the minimum screen measure of 3.5″. Resolution support of 1280 X 760 pixels is also rumored to be in place for screens exceeding 4″. So what will become of the popular 3.2″ display paradigm? Perpetual Foryo obscurity, apparently. The OS will also demand a minimum 1GHz CPU and 512MB RAM. I’m not expecting any complaints on that front.

Of course, Gingerbread represents a major shift for team Android in terms of focus, which will now be squarely directed at the user interface. According to this recent potential leak, we have only to look at the 3D app drawer in current versions to understand what Google is aiming at for 3.0.

Via PhoneDog

In October of 2008, the month T-Mobile launched the first Android phone, Erick Tseng – then the Android Lead Project Manager – told Forbes:

“A good user interface is paramount in building a great mobile phone”

UI was a priority for team Android then, as it is today. However, only recently has Google achieved a sense of satisfaction (as temporary as it may be) regarding the completeness and quality of the underlying OS that would allow them to shift focus away from functionality and almost entirely to the user experience. The Forbes quote above comes from an article about The Astonishing Tribe’s involvement in UI development for the earliest releases of Android. As astonishing as TAT’s work is, we need to look elsewhere in order to get an idea of what influences we might see in the Android of tomorrow. Or, more specifically, the Android of Q4, 2010.

It’s hardly surprizing, considering their recent acquisition of BumpTop and hiring of webOS guru, Matias Duarte – Palm’s Senior Director of Human Interface and User Experience – that Google’s current focus for Android is the UI. And TechCrunch reports today that “multiple sources close to Google” have confirmed that the search giant’s top priority for the next version of Android, also known as Gingerbread, is to develop a user interface so sexy and functional as to virtually eliminated the desire of handset manufacturers to slap their own ideas on top of the base OS; modifications that have contributed to Android’s fragmentation issues.

Having reached a point where the operating system’s features are rich, function reliable, and support for the latest hardware in place, some major UI enhancements (or possibly, an overhaul), could go a long way to unify the Android experience across various hardware, giving users a familiar set of features and controls regardless of hardware branding and future versions. The question is, will OEMs be willing to let go of the identifying modifications they’ve made to the Android UI for the purpose of branding, user loyalty, and aesthetics? Considering the open nature of Android, probably not – no matter how fantastic Gingerbread tastes.

Via TechCrunch

During the second keynote at Google I/O Vic Gundotra talked briefly about what’s next for Android, beyond Froyo. He showed how you’ll be able to stream music from your PC and a new voice search feature. Anybody familiar with the media player on Android can quickly notice that the one they showed has nothing to do with the current one. This new one is  a mix between the Gallery app and the Weather and News app. You can swipe left and right to move between tabs and it looks much slicker overall. There’s no doubt this is the Music app since the Googler clicks the Music icon in the homescreen.

Maybe the dessert-inspired version names are not randomly assigned. If you think about it, Froyo is all about speed and Froyo (the dessert) is a very light dessert. On the other hand, Gingerbread is not light all, it’s heavy and beautifully adorned, just google “gingerbread house”.

You can watch the keynote here, skip to 20:00 and 30:00 to see “Gingerbread” in action. What do you think, is this Gingerbread? Or maybe is just the new media player and they’ll update it soon via the Market (remember they’re moving those apps to the Market to address fragmentation).

Feeling low on your Android news diet? We’ve got the answer. Three cookie-sized (get it?) pieces of news small enough we can fit them in a single article, but big enough we can’t let them pass.

First up, the next pastry-inspired codename for the Android OS will be Gingerbread, according to a Googler. It is anybody’s guess what name will begin with “H” though.

Next, straight from your favorite science-fiction movie comes this statement from Franz Och, Google’s Head of translation services: “We think speech-to-speech translation should be possible and work reasonably well in a few years’ time” Yes, apparently in a couple of years we will be able to talk in a language and have a phone say the same thing in another. This will make for even funnier translations. When you ask your Latino neighbor if he wants to hang out and he suddenly punches you in the face, at least you’ll know who to thank for that.

And lastly, if you’re stuck on an Android version lower than 2.1 you have yet another reason to bash your phone’s manufacturer and to buy the phone directly from Google next time. When Flash 10.1 arrives for Android phones, it will only work on version 2.1. However, Flash 10.1 is supposed to arrive the first half of this year. Maybe by then most phones will be updated to 2.1.

[Via Gizmodo, LWN, Times Online]