28 July 2009 | Author: J. Cave SEO Consultant

Google's Donut a real treat for developers

It wasn't too long ago that Google announced the release of cupcake, the SDK for Android 1.5. Now, just a few months later it looks like Google has added another piece of repository code, codename Donut.

Soon after the announcement of the Donut code, a thread on the xda forum got developers overly excited when it was announced that the new Donut code would support multitouch. Multitouch is a feature which is common to Apple's iPhone which allows users to use multiple fingers for zooming and rotating when using various applications.

The rumour was quickly shot down when Google Android framework developer Romain Guy entered the forum, dampening any hope that multitouch would be available on the Android any time soon. Guy was also quick to point out the Donut is not going to be Android 2.0 and is in fact not guaranteed to appear in the next Android update.

While Google has been quick to quench any rumours of multitouch being a part of the Donut code, this hasn't stopped developers speculating as to what other possible features could be included. While the information about Donut has been for the most part extremely sketchy, Information Week have confirmed that some of the hot new features include more text-to-speech features, automatic device backups and integrated universal search.

Donut also includes support for CDMA devices meaning carriers like US-based Verizon and Sprint will be able to launch Android phones. Sprint CEO Dan Hesses has recently said that he expects Sprint to launch an Android phone by the end of the year.

Andy Ruby, Google's head of Android development has said he expects Google to release about two Android releases per year. Although Cupcake was dubbed Android 1.5, Donut is not expected to be an Android 2.0 release so it looks as though there could be more treats in store for developers this year.

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