Android OS 2.2 A True Speed Demon; 450% Faster Than OS 2.1

The next version of Android OS has truly turned up the heat on it’s predecessor. Android devotee website Android Police has been running Android 2.2 with full Flash 10.1 support on a Nexus One for about a week now. The info they’ve come up with is quite impressive, to say the least.

According to their analysis, the Froyo’s JIT(Just In Time) compilation gives it a 450% speed boost over Android 2.1. JIT compilation is used in Microsoft’s .NET framework service and also certain Java implementations for high speed code execution. Usually finding the correct tradeoff between startup delays and maximum performance is the tricky bit here, but the 450% increase shows that Android team has hit the bull’s eye, and then some.

The LINPAK benchmark test was used to gauge the performance on the machine. LINPAK is a benchmark  used to measure the performance of a dedicated system for solving a dense system of linear equations.

LINPAK results showed the Nexus One running 2.1 producing a score of around 7 MFLOPS. Really fast, considering the HTC Hero only manages 2 MFLOPS. Of course, 1GHZ Snapdragon vs. 600 MHz Quallcom ain’t exactly a fair fight.

However, Android 2.2 managed a score of 37.5 MFLOPS. That’s a 450% boost to performance. Flash 10.1 really comes into its own from this added speed I’m sure. Now I’m thinking: HTC EVO, over here in Pakistan, running on Froyo, leaving all the Nexus Ones in the dust…not a bad idea. Or even the rumoured HTC Scorpion, with its 1.5 GHz processor…

Iron Man’s Latest “Ally” Reveals Some More Specs

The Iron Man 2 media machine has been promoting this phone for quite a while now; and earlier today more detailed specs regarding this device cropped up on various website. The following is info gleaned from said websites, & unfortunately does not meet the high expectations of some that this would be a possible iPhone/Nexus/Android contender. Indeed, it does come with the Android 2.1 OS, but hardware wise it falls in the middle range bracket. Below are the complete specs:

• Android version 2.1 (Stock, not custom)
• Full-QWERTY keyboard and on-screen keyboard with tactile feedback
• 3.2 MP camera (with flash and autofous, 4x zoom, panoramic photo options, variable resolution for both still shots & video)
• microSD expansion slot upto 16GB, according to the lgim2.com website. It’ll be bundled with a 4GB card.
• 3.2″ or 3.1″touchscreen (800*480 resolution)
• Bluetooth 2.1, GPS, and Wi-Fi
• 600MHz processor, with 256MB of RAM.
• Pre-loaded Android apps: Life360, Wikitude, Speed View, Hoccer, Foursquare, Yelp, Wertago, ShopSavvy, Shazam

The phone will sell for $99.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate and two-year contract. Verizon will require users to sign up for a $29.99 per month data plan as well. It’ll be shipped on 20th May.