Android 2.0 – aka Donut, according to Google’s cake-based naming system – is chock full of new features, as demonstrated at the Google I/O conference yesterday. Unsurprisingly, given the source, search is high on the list.
Android 2.0 comes with Android Search – Google’s integrated search app that will search both the web (which Google is, er, quite good at already) and the data on your phone – your contacts, schedule, music tracks, etc.
Also new is Intelligent Search, which is just a fancy way of saying that the Search app remembers previous queries and offers to autocomplete them for you. There will also be a way for other search providers to get in on the act by writing short bits of XML code that will integrate their search engines into the app.
Android 2.0 supports handwriting gestures for quick searching – e.g. ‘write’ the letter E on the screen and your contacts list will filter out anything that doesn’t begin with that letter. The voice control system from Android 1.5 (Cupcake) also gets an overhaul with a full text-to-speech API.
Available now | £varies | Android (via Android Community)
