HTC, manufacturer of the G1, has made available new system images for users to upgrade the Android Dev Phone 1 to Android 1.5.

Android developer phones such as the ADP1 are intended for application development rather than everyday use, and are operator-neutral and country-neutral, so they may not include specific features found on end-user handsets, according to Android's Xavier Ducrohet, who first announced Android 1.5's availability on Monday.

Android 1.5 will be deployable to end users' Android-powered handsets beginning in May.

Slew of Improvements

"Android 1.5 introduced a number of new features that application developers can take advantage of, like virtual input devices and speech recognition," said Andy McFadden, senior software architect at Android.

Improvements include faster camera startup and image capture, quicker acquisition of GPS locations, smoother scrolling of pages in the browser, and faster Gmail conversation list scrolling.

Cupcake will include several new system features, including a refined user interface. The updated UI will include changes to its browser, Gmail, contacts, camera and gallery, and a better way to manage applications.

"They are definitely adding some new stuff including video support, faster GPS, on-screen keyboard, which is very, very nice," said Michael Gartenberg, a vice president at Interpret. "And finally some ability to do Web-based widgets for the home screen, so developers can do stuff on their own to create additional functionality."

New 1.5 Features

Aside from its improvements, the 1.5 update also includes a slew of new features, including Bluetooth support, a new browser updated with the latest Webkit browser, support for SquirrelFish JavaScript engines, copy and paste, and search within the page.

New features to the system include a new Linux kernel (version 2.6.27), SD card file system auto checking and repair, and SIM application toolkit 1.0.

Also included in the update are several applications, including a calculator, music, messaging, camcorder, and alarm clock.

Testing Is Key

"You must test your application on every version of the Android framework that is expected to support it," McFadden said. "By definition, the behavior of your application will be different on each. Remember the mantra: If you haven't tried it, it doesn't work."

Developers can also test for backward compatibility by running their application in an emulator from an older SDK, advised McFadden, but now with 1.5 there is a better way.

The 1.5 release allows developers to specify "Android Virtual Devices" with different API levels.