Samsung Nexus S Hardware Specifications:

• Android 2.3 (Gingerbread)
• 4.0” WVGA Super Amoled Screen
• 5 MP Rear Camera
• VGA Front-Facing Camera
• HD Video Playback
• NFC (Near Field Communications) Capability
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
• 1GHz Cortex A8 (Hummingbird) processor
• 16GB iNAND flash memory
• Quad-band GSM: 850, 900, 1800, 1900
• Tri-band HSPA: 900, 2100, 1700
• HSPA type: HSDPA (7.2Mbps) HSUPA (5.76Mbps)

Out of those specifications, the one thing that has most people up in excitement is Android 2.3, or Gingerbread, which will be the latest released OS from the Android team at Google.  According to the press release, “Android 2.3, Gingerbread, is the fastest version of Android yet. It features support for Near Field Communication (NFC), a new and improved keyboard with multi-touch support, Internet calling (VoIP/SIP support), and a clean new user interface.”

For those that need a specific instruction and information on Android 2.3, you can download the entire user guide here.

Google Android 2.3 OS Features:

New Keyboard

First of all, the thing that everyone uses every freaking day of the year, the Keyboard. This new keyboard has its keys reshaped for faster input and editing, bringing up word suggestions also depending on what letters you’re typing. Switching to voice mode allows you not to replace selections, multi-touch key-chording allowing you to type numbers and symbols with keyboard shortcut combos instead of flipping back and forth like you’ve got to now. Included deep inside the keyboard class “android.view.KeyEvent” is support for the following buttons – A,B,C, L1, L2, R1, R2, select, start, X, Y, and Z – aka PlayStation controls.

Copy/Paste

The copy and paste function has been improved to include pressing and holding to select words, stay in selection mode, and copy text for later pasting.

Word Selection

Improvements to word selecting include the aforementioned press-hold, a function iPhone users are already used to using. Once pressed and held, a free-selection mode begins, a place where you can adjust the area you’re selecting by expanding bounding boxes.

Power Management

Improved next is your ability to manage your power usage. Inside your application settings, you’re able to see your battery in how it’s being used by various apps. See how much that Matrix screensaver really is sucking up all your juice! Hopefully soon those task killers will be rendered outdated.

Application Control

Along these same lines is a shortcut to “Manage Applications” which you can reach in your options menu. From here, you can indeed view all of your applications, how much power they’re using, and you’ve got the ability to stop any app instantly.

NFC Near Field Communication

This is the future of commerce as far as credit cards go. Use this to touch or swipe NFC tag embedded posters, advertisements, other weird junk, to be directed to a website (and more than likely other such actions). In the future, this functionality will work to send and receive money via your handheld device. Excellence.

Internet Calling

SIP Internet Calling addresses can be added to your contacts list and you can make internet calls via Quick Contact or Dialer. Hooray! Of course you’ll need a SIP account for this to work and these features will be turned off or on depending on what your manufacturer or carrier wants.

Downloads Management

A new download manager is in place to work from your browser, email, or other apps. This could be rather helpful I must say so myself.

Camera

Multiple cameras can now be accessed from your one new camera app, just by clicking the “select camera” button.

UI Improvements

Simple changes in the user interface of this Gingerbread system make the whole situation faster, easier, and more power-efficient. One example is the changing of the background to BLACK in the areas that it’ll always be covered up such as the notification bar, menus, and etc. Changes in these menus are also in place to simplify.

DEVELOPERS UPDATES:

Concurrent Garbage Collector

Dalivik VM brings you a lovely new way to collect your garbage during gameplay for apps, this bringing along a whole lot smoother and more responsive playing of game-based apps.

Video Drivers

Third-party video drivers are introduced to improve OpenGL ES operations and to increase your whole 3D graphics performance experience.

Event Distribution

Touch and keyboard events are now handled faster and much more efficiently reducing the amount of CPU used during event distribution. Responsiveness is therefor improved in all apps, especially those with 3D graphics and those that are CPU-intensive.

Event Handling

Along those same lines, apps using native code are now allowed the ability to receive and process input and sensor events right into their native code, improving both responsiveness and efficiency. All supported sensor types can now be received by apps, enabling and disabling of specific sensors is allowed, as is managing of event delivery rate and queing. Native libraries exposed by Gingerbread let apps handle the same kinds of input events as currently available through the framework.

Gyroscrope, rotation vector, gravity, barometer sensors, and linear acceleration

All new sensor types Android 2.3 has added API support for. Open API is added for Native Audio, Khronos OpenSL ES. Gingerbread gives you an interface to its Khronos EGL library allowing apps to manage graphics context as well as manage and create OpenGL ES textures and surfaces from native code.

Native Access to Activity Lifecycle, Windows Management

Native apps are now able to declare a new type of Activity class by the name of NativeActivity, its lifecycle callbacks implemented right direct into the native code. This NativeActivity and its native code run inside the system like other Activities, they running in apps system process and executing on apps main UI thread, receiving the same lifecycle callbacks as the rest of the Activities. Also Native APIs are revealed for managing windows.

Native Access to Storage, Assets

A native Asset Manager API is now accessible by apps, getting rid of the need to go through JNI for retrieving application assets. Streaming decompression is included along this path. Limit to compression no longer exists as far as how much .apk assets can be read, and apps have access to a native Storage Manager API that works directly with OBB files (although Dev tools for managing and creating OBB files wont be available until early 2011.)

Robust Native Development Environment

Android NDK (r5 or higher) gives you now a complete set of tools and toolchains and libraries for helping you develop apps inside Android 2.3.

Internet Telephony

SIP-based internet telephony features can now be added to apps, Android 2.3 including a full SIP protocol stack and integrated call management service allowing apps easy set-up of incoming and outgoing voice calls (no managing sessions, audio recording, playback, or transport-level communication needed directly).

NFC

Near Field Communication capability allows developers access to the new world. Proximity-based info and services for all, using NFC API to respond to NFC tags by touching things like posters, stickers, and other devices. Any number of actions can follow.

Mixable Audio Effects

New audio API allows developers creation of rich audio environments with equalization, bass, headphone virtualization, and reverb. Mixing of multiple effects in local tracks or globally.

Support for New Media Formats

Built in support for VP8 video compression as well as WebM open container format. Also AAC encoding and AMR wideband encoding is included for apps to capture higher quality audio than just narrowband.

Access to Multiple Cameras

New Camera API makes use of as many cameras as are available on the device they’re working for, querying the platform for info on each camera, opening the camera that’s needed. Simple, necessary.

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Related Posts:

• Google’s Android 2.3 Gingerbread To Release “In A Few Weeks”
• Google Unveils Samsung Nexus S; Coming To U.S On December 16th, 2010
• Google Releases Android 2.3 User’s Guide

Authors: _GadgetNews

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