Android Froyo officially launched

Google officially announced the launch of Android 2.2, codenamed Froyo (short for Frozen Yogurt) at its annual I/O Developer Conference in San Francisco. Users of Android phones have been eagerly awaiting this update which touts brand new features including huge speed increases, creating portable hotspots, USB tethering, and most important of all (for a lot of users), support for Adobe Flash 10.

This update gives Android based smartphones huge advantage over Apple’s flagship iPhones because Apple seems unwilling to budge from its position of ‘No Flash Support’ for its range of smartphones. Considering the number of websites using Flash, especially those that embed video from sites such as YouTube, being able to view them on their phone is seemingly, a necessary feature that Apple refuses to provide and Android now supports straight out of the box.

Google is rolling out the updates in stages to its users. So, not everyone will be able to get the OTA (Over the Air) update at the same time. But Google has announced that it will be available to users of Google’s Nexus One smartphone, “in the next few weeks”.

Since this major update has been anticipated for a long time, not all users are patient enough to wait. Eager users can find the update package as a zipped file and install it manually on their phone. While this procedure does involve a small risk of crashing your phone, most expert users should be able to find the procedure and the update file on the internet via a simple Google search.