Android 2.1 offers HTC Hero feature enhancements and new developer APIs

Starting today, Sprint’s HTC Hero customers can upgrade to Android 2.1.  The software release will be available at www.sprint.com/downloads.

The Android 2.1 software release provides a significant number of feature enhancements, new platform technology support and new developer APIs, as well as fix several known issues.

Customers will need to plug their HTC Hero into a PC or notebook PC using the supplied USB cable, in order to download the Android 2.1 upgrade to their device.

The software release provides a variety of feature enhancements, new platform technology support, new developer APIs and known issue fixes, including, but not limited to:

Feature Enhancements

• Sync support for contacts from multiple data sources including Exchange

• Enhanced device settings

• Exchanges support

• Merged folders across multiple accounts for Inbox, Unread and Flagged email

• Support for built-in flash

• Improved Android keyboard layout and responsiveness

• Smarter dictionary

• Refreshed user interface with actionable browser URL bar

• Support for double-tap zoom

• Calendar Agenda view with infinite scrolling

• Attendee status and guest invites

• Ability to search MMS and SMS messages

• Auto-delete of older messages when short on storage

• Quick view pinch-and-zoom

• Universal Search

• Google Navigator

• Enhanced Google Maps

• Enhanced Android Market and apps

Known Issue Fixes

• Clock widget displaying inaccurate times

• YouTube, "Cannot play video" error

• Intermittent Unable to Receive SMS

• Wired headset not recognized by device

New Developer APIs

• Turn on/off Bluetooth, device and service discovery and send/receive data

• New APIs for contacts sync adapters to connect to any backend

• Centralized account manager API to securely store and access authentication tokens/passwords across one or more services

• New Contact APIs that allow for data from multiple accounts

• Support for third-party sync adapters

• HTML5 support

• Database API support for client-side databases using SQL

• Application cache support for offline applications

• Geolocation API support to provide location information about the device

• Video tag support in fullscreen mode

New Platform Technologies

• Completely revamped graphics architecture for improved performance, enabling better hardware acceleration

• New Bluetooth profile support