The Samsung Galaxy S will be soon be getting its Gingerbread on, despite the fact that lots of you have only had the Froyo upgrade for a few months. This Gingerbread build, which leaked out on to the internet this week, will be for the Samsung Galaxy S i9000 – which means if you’re in the US, you’ll be getting a different build (some US carriers took a slightly different Galaxy S model) although it’s a-ok for us Limeys.
We’ve been sleuthing to unearth the secret new features you’ll be getting with your Samsung Galaxy S Gingerbread upgrade. Click through for full details!
What you should know is that the leaked Samsung Galaxy S Gingerbread upgrade is nowhere near ready for prime time: we don’t know when it’ll be rolled out, finished and bug free, on UK networks. But you can get a good sense of what to expect regardless, starting with this hands on video of the new build.
What’s new?
The first thing that’s been shouted about on the forums of devs rocking this Samsung Galaxy S Gingerbread build is that it’s faster, and lasts longer. Battery consumption looks like it will slow down so you’ll get more power hours out of your Galaxy S, and the browser has been given a tweak to speed it up too – although the four tab limit is still in place. We’ve not confirmed this, but several hacker on the XDA-Developers forum say the browser is now being aided by hardware acceleration, so it can make better use of the graphics power inside the phone.
Vanilla Android 2.3’s superior text selection is also in evidence, with hackers claiming that copy and paste within the Gmail app works seamlessly – that was our only real gripe with Google’s brilliant Gmail Android app, so it’s good to know Samsung at least is solving this.
Start up time has also been shortened. According to one XDA-Developers forum poster, it “boots faster than anything I have experienced before”, which is handy if you find yourself restarting your phone after a crash, or as may be more likely, turning it off last thing at night.
What’s stayed?
TouchWiz 3.0 is sticking around. There’s no new Samsung UI for the Galaxy S Gingerbread build, which means that there’s no games hub in this build, as that’s a part of TouchWiz 4 which will debut on the Samsung Galaxy S 2.
What’s gone?
The new neon look
While relatively superficial, the overhauled, gradient free colour scheme on the notification bar in Android 2.3 on the Google Nexus S does look undeniably spiffy. Samsung’s included very few traces of that in its official Samsung Galaxy S Gingerbread upgrade by the looks of things – the orange glow you get when you scroll too far down a web page has vanished from everywhere bar the YouTube app, and icons in the tray only glow green when activated. Oh, and the CRT-style screen wipe animation on the Nexus S when you lock it? That’s gone too, although to be fair this got tired very quickly.
The Android 2.3 keyboard
Google’s native touchscreen QWERTY keyboard is easily the best new feature of Android 2.3 Gingerbread – with months of use, we’re starting to think it might even be better than the iPhone’s. Sadly though, this Samsung Galaxy S Gingerbread upgrade appears to keep Samsung’s own QWERTY keyboard the phone ships with. It’s not all sad emoticons: you can always switch to Swype, or grab another keyboard from the Android Market – but it is a shame for users unaware of the option to switch keyboard in Android, who’ll miss out.
Looking forward to the Samsung Galaxy S Gingerbread upgrade? Shout out with what else is on your wishlist that you can’t see in here!
For more (continually updated) info on the build, check out the XDA Forum thread.
