Android 2.0 Development

Last Tuesday, Google released version 2.0 of Android, their open source mobile operating system.  This new version of Android is about to appear on many new smart-phones about to be released (notably Motorola’s Droid).  I am anxious to see how these new phones compare to the iPhone.

What got my attention is that Android now supports native app development — the Native Development Kit was introduced in June.  Before this, applications had to be written in Java.  Java is fine, but applications that are compiled for the specific device run faster and aren’t as restricted in what they can do.  This should make the Android platform more attractive to many developers and eventually the end-users.