Android 1.5 “Cupcake” has officially been released and is being rolled out right now to users in the United Kingdom.  The actual release dates are carrier specific and US carriers as usual are slow to push out the updates.  If UK Android users do not want to wait for the carriers to automatically update their phones, it is possible to manually do so.

User Interface Refinements

  • System-wide:
    • Refinement of all core UI elements
    • Animated window transitions (off by default)
    • Accelerometer-based application rotations
  • UI polish for:
    • In-call experience
    • Contacts, Call log, and Favorites
    • SMS & MMS
    • Browser
    • Gmail
    • Calendar
    • Email
    • Camera & Gallery
    • Application management

Performance Improvements

  • Faster Camera start-up and image capture
  • Much faster acquisition of GPS location (powered by SUPL AGPS)
  • Smoother page scrolling in Browser
  • Speedier GMail conversation list scrolling

New Features

  • On-screen soft keyboard
    • Works in both portrait and landscape orientation
    • Support for user installation of 3rd party keyboards
    • User dictionary for custom words
  • Home screen
    • Widgets
      • Bundled home screen widgets include: analog clock, calendar,
        music player, picture frame, and search
    • Live folders
  • Camera & Gallery
    • Video recording
    • Video playback (MPEG-4 & 3GP formats)
  • Bluetooth
    • Stereo Bluetooth support (A2DP and AVCRP profiles)
    • Auto-pairing
    • Improved handsfree experience
  • Browser
    • Updated with latest Webkit browser & Squirrelfish Javascript engines
    • Copy ‘n paste in browser
    • Search within a page
    • User-selectable text-encoding
    • UI changes include:
      • Unified Go and Search box
      • Tabbed bookmarks/history/most-visited screen
  • Contacts
    • Shows user picture for Favorites
    • Specific date/time stamp for events in call log
    • One-touch access to a contact card from call log event
  • System
    • New Linux kernel (version 2.6.27)
    • SD card filesystem auto-checking and repair
    • SIM Application Toolkit 1.0
  • Google applications (not available in the Android 1.5 System Image that is
    included in the Android SDK)
    • View Google Talk friends’ status in Contacts, SMS, MMS, GMail, and
      Email applications
    • Batch actions such as archive, delete, and label on Gmail messages
    • Upload videos to Youtube
    • Upload photos on Picasa

New APIs and Manifest Elements

  • UI framework
  • AppWidget framework
    • APIs for creating secure home screen AppWidgets. For information about how to use AppWidgets, see the Developer’s
      Guide AppWidgets
      documentation.
    • APIs for populating Live Folders
      with custom content.
  • Media framework
    • Raw audio recording and playback APIs
    • Interactive MIDI playback engine
    • Video Recording APIs for developers (3GP format).
    • Video and photo sharing Intents
    • Media search Intent
  • Input Method framework
    • Input Method
      Service       framework
    • Text-prediction engine
    • Ability to provide downloadable IMEs to users
  • Application-defined hardware requirementsApplications can now use a new element in their manifest files, <uses-configuration> to indicate to the Android system what hardware features
    they require in order to function properly. For example, an application might
    use the element to specify that it requires a physical keyboard or a particular
    navigation device, such as a trackball. Prior to installing the application, the
    Android system checks the attributes defined for the
    <uses-configuration> element and allows the installation to
    continue only if the required hardware is present.
  • Speech recognition framework
  • Miscellaneous API additions
    • LocationManager – Applications can get location change updates via
      Intent
    • WebView – Touch start/end/move/cancel DOM event support
    • Redesigned Sensor Manager
      APIs
    • GLSurfaceView – convenience framework for creating OpenGL
      applications
    • Broadcast Intent for app update install succeeded – for smoother app
      upgrade experience

Check It Out> Android, Talk Android (Manual Update)