Android Gingerbread is Coming

It looks like Google will be bringing out the newest version of the Android smart phone a little earlier than expected. According to reports, the new Android 2.3 Gingerbread will be out on November 11.

For those not keeping tabs on the news, here’s the quick summary:

Google originally announced the Gingerbread as Android 3.0 –a full update from version 2.0 Éclair. This was done at the Google I/O conference earlier this year. While the Android 2.2 Froyo was focused on stabilizing and improving the overall performance of the Android OS, the Gingerbread was slated to be a new standard for all devices running Google’s platform.

Currently, a large percent of all high end Android smart phones are being slowly updated to version 2.2 Froyo, but at the moment, the standard version is still 2.0 and 2.1 Éclair. Some mobile phones, such as the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 have come out using only Android 1.6 Donut, leaving them two whole Android versions behind in terms of being updated. This level of fragmentation has always been a serious bane on Android developers as being able to deliver a uniform user experience is deemed to be close to impossible.

Recent announcements have confirmed that the Gingerbread will no longer sport the 3.0 number, but instead, it has been delegated to a lower scale update at version 2.3. This has now led to many believing that that update will not be about creating a new Android standard, but to simply bring more features and functions to the OS. In the meanwhile, the next version is going to take the 3.0 version number designation. At the moment, it is said that the Android OS to follow Gingerbread will be named Honeycomb.

There is no doubt that Google’s Android OS is growing very fast, but unless they are able to overcome fragmentation issues, it will be a while before the Android is able to fully dominate the market.