Pah! Cupcake. Any true sweets connoisseur knows that the cupcake is at the bottom of the dessert totem pole, only ranking above those nasty red/white mints they chuck in alongside your bill. We’d take a delicious, engulfed-in-glaze donut over a cupcake any day – and so would Google.
At today’s Google I/O conference, Google gave folks in the audience a sneak peak at Android 2.0, which they’ve aptly named “Donut”. It’s still fairly early in development, but they’ve already nailed out a few features that look pretty damn delicious.
The new stuff on display:
- Android Search: Like the iPhone 3.0 software, Donut will be able to search across all local files. Unlike the iPhone OS, however, Android Search will be able to jump online at the touch of a button. (The Pre will be able to do local/online search as well – so we’d imagine that Apple’s already cracking away at squeezing in a websearch button)
- Text-to-speech API: Google has had text-to-speech in their own Android widgets for some time now. Donut will open up the text-to-speech APIs to all, allowing third party devs to roll it into their own apps. According to Google, it should play friendly with plenty of voices and accents
Google also plans to open up a bunch of other new APIs with Donut, though they’re remaining mum for today. We expect to hear more about those in tomorrow’s keynote.