Google Android plays with Donut

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 28 Jul 2009 at 10:43

Google has updated the Donut development branch of its Android mobile operating system, though there's still no support for multitouch.

As with the earlier Cupcake release, Donut is progressing as a separate development branch alongside work on version two of the Android OS. These separate branches allow developers to test and experiment with new features, though they're not guaranteed to find their way into the main release.

Among the new features being floated in Donut is a system-wide search similar to Apple's Spotlight, though it will feature handwriting recognition. There's also a text-to-speech feature and an API that will support Google's voice-recognition technology.

Google offered developers an early look at Donut back at Google I/O in May, and news of the update brought immediate speculation the search giant was on the verge of pushing out version two of the Google operating system - featuring support for multitouch.

This rumour was immediately quashed by Google Android framework developer Romain Guy: "Donut is not Android 2, and there's no multitouch support in Donut," he wrote on to the Android Developers Google group.