The next firmware update for the Android Operating System is about to hit the airwaves soon. Rumours have been circulating for months, and fans of Android have been salivating over each tidbit of leaked information they can get their hands on. As the Google I/O approaches close, let’s look at the rumors and leaks we have accumulated since the last official update.

Just-in-time Compilation

Perhaps the most significant update to be unveiled will be the JIT implementation in the stock ROM. What does it do? It allows for code to be understood and executed easily by the phone as-it-happens. Until now, Android has used interpreted or static (ahead-of-time) compilation, but JIT is rumoured to speed up the operation of the phone by as much as 450% ! That’s something worth being excited about!

Flash 10.1

Steve Jobs, of Apple Inc., has publicly made clear recently his distaste for Adobe’s web-content app – Flash. Granted, Flash has earned a lot of bad rep for its misuse and bulky behind-the-scene coding. However, a modern browser unable to run Flash is unheard of – that is due to the extensive use of Flash everywhere on the internet. In fact, some websites are coded entirely in Flash, as well as video-players which are all the rage now. For the Android OS to have Flash and for iPhone to miss out could be a huge blow to Apple and its iPhone in the long run.

USB Tethering

Carriers now give out unlimited data plans through 3G networks for smartphones. Sadly, it is not used much – but what if you could somehow ‘tether’ your phone to a laptop or a netbook and use the internet on it instead? That is what USB tethering does – connect the phone to your computer/laptop through the supplied data-cable and access the internet through a larger screen and a full keyboard!

Wireless Hotspot

What if you are traveling and you forgot to bring your data cable – no tethering, no file-transfer to your computer! That is where this next feature comes in. Wireless Hotspot will allow your phone to act as a wireless-router, broadcasting your 3G network’s internet as an accessible wireless-access-point, allowing you to connect multiple devices to it and use the internet through it! Not to mention, if you download an application such as SWIFTP, you can set up an FTP Server on your device and wirelessly transfer files back and forth without a data cable!

Applications Installed to SD Card

With internal phone storage limited, many users have to pick and choose between which applications they want to keep, but no longer! This functionality of moving installed applications was only available to rooted users using a custom ROM, but now Google is making it official! Now you can install as many applications as you desire, limited only by the storage space of your SD card – which goes up to 32 GB!
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When the phone and your computer are connected through the data cable, there are several commands you can use through the ADB.

Before typing any of these commands, first navigate to your tools folder in your android-sdk directory through the command prompt. (example, C:\android_sdk\tools)

Restart your phone

adb shell reboot

Restart into Recovery Mode

adb shell reboot recovery

Copying applications from the phone to the computer

adb pull /system/sd/app app
adb pull /system/sd/app-private app-private

Copying applications from the computer to the phone

adb push app /system/sd/app
adb push app-private /system/sd/app-private

Deleting existing apps on Android SD

adb shell rm -r /system/sd/app
adb shell rm -r /system/sd/app-private

Remove system applications

adb remount
adb rm /system/app/Stocks.apk

View the phone’s boot process/log

adb logcat

There are a lot more commands to be found if you google for them.