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The second version of the AndroidAndroid mobile operating system is coming soon, and we have a video to prove it. Android, of course, has been growing in popularity in recent months due to blowback against certain practices with the Apple iPhone, and a growing number of phones that use the operating system on a variety of carriers.

Check out GoogleGoogle’s introduction of Android 2.0:

For extended coverage, MashableMashable has an excellent round up of the forthcoming features, and you should read the full announcement from the Android Team. If you are a developer, you can check out the SDK now, right here.
Via thenextweb.com

Starting to feel like AndroidAndroid’s “Cupcake” update (v1.5) from May is getting a bit stale? GoogleGoogle’s got a new treat for you. They’ve just launched version 1.6 (which, under Google’s pastry-oriented naming scheme, is known as “Donut”) of Android to developers, which packs a hefty handful of new features and polishes up much of what was already there.

The bit that plays best to our geeky-blogger side (rather than our geeky-consumer side) is whats been added for the sake of lineup expandability. Namely, we’re talking about CDMA support – which, while not immediately awesome, opens the doors to Android handsets on the likes of Verizon, Sprint, and Virgin Mobile. Beyond that, they’ve also bumped the supported resolutions list to include screens all the way up to 800×480 – in other words, Android can now push much prettier images to higher-end screens.

With that said, v1.6 isn’t without obvious, user-facing improvements. The homescreen, for example, has been modified to include a new “Quick Search” box, which lets you dig through the web or your browser bookmarks, history, and contacts in a vein similar to that of the iPhone’s spotlight screen. The camera has seen a dramatic overhaul, improving load times by as much as 39%…
Read on at mobilecrunch.com

The long-awaited flood of Google Android devices is about to hit the market, which should help bring more cool applications to new AndroidAndroid phones.

Motorola will be the next big manufacturer to announce its Android phone. The company plans to formally unveil it at an event on Thursday in San Francisco. Motorola has already been reaching out to developers to get them on board to create new applications that it hopes will drive demand for the new phones.

Mobile applications for smartphones are hot. The fact that Apple’s App Store has had more than 1 billion downloads after only being around for a year means that smartphone users are hungry for applications that make their phones more useful and fun. But developers, whether they are large or small, have limited resources and time, and they must choose which platforms to develop applications for first…
Read on at cnet.com

Streaming music service SpotifySpotify has launched on the iPhone and AndroidAndroid devices for its premium subscribers only. You can download it from Apple’s App Store here and the Android Market. Though plans to launch there are in play, the service is not yet live in the US, and it has already taken several European markets by storm. This iPhone app is basically identical to the leaked beta we reviewed in detail.

The mobile apps will allow you to play the entire Spotify catalogue and the ‘offline mode’ caches playlists so they can be played… when you are offline, like on a plane. Spotify has set up a special mobile section with more details.

The launch of this mobile version now fires the starting gun on their US launch plans. A large number of record labels have actually invested in the Swedish-born, London-based startup, which is now valued at €170 million, or about $242 million, with a post money valuation of around €200 million…
Read on at TechCrunch.com

FoursquareFoursquare has been all the rage in the early adopter mobile space the past several months. And it has been peeking outside of the early adopter crowd with things such as local bars offering promotions for Foursquare usage. But it has still been held back a bit by the fact that it has only had an iPhone app and a somewhat clunky mobile web interface. And Foursquare understood that, so it called for developers to help build its app for the other mobile platforms. Today, the first of those is ready to go: Foursquare for AndroidAndroid.

Work on the project started back in April and was mainly coded by Joe LaPenna and Chris Brummel in their spare time. It started as a project to first reverse engineer the iPhone API, and then migrate to Android using Foursquare’s beta API, LaPenna tells us. After a few months of work, the duo and Foursquare’s Naveen Selvadurai (who has been managing it from the service’s side) feels its now feature-complete and ready for distribution…
Read on at techcrunch.com

The AndroidAndroid world got another app store this week, one aimed at so-called “high-end” devices such as the forthcoming ARCHOS 5 Internet Tablet. But in the meantime, existing owners of some not-so-high-end Android handsets were warned the only way they’ll be able to get OS updates is by buying an entirely new device. ARCHOS this week set a date for the official launch of its Android-based ARCHOS 5 Internet Tablet, which sports a 5-inch display designed for playing HD video. It’s expected to allow TV recording on the 500 GB hard drive, too, thanks to the TI OMAP3440 processor, which is optimized for video processing. The launch event is scheduled to take place on Sept. 15 in Paris…
Read on at gigaom.com

Sherpa, a location-based services application developed by Santa Monica-based start-up Geodelic is amongst the fastest growing application for GoogleGoogle’s AndroidAndroid. In past one week, the company claims that it has seen 50,000 downloads from the Android market. The T-Mobile MyTouch 3G, which launched earlier today has been providing the impetus for growth. Nearly 4,500 copies of the app were downloaded today alone. Sherpa, as we explained, Sherpa constantly learns your favorite locations and starts to aggregate them. The more you use the application, the smarter it gets, thereby serving up location-information unique to you… Read on at Gigaom.com

GoogleGoogle’s AndroidAndroid platform may have started out in handsets, but it was only a matter of time before it ended up in a variety of other devices, from netbooks to set-top boxes. An executive at one of the companies that designs chips for embedded devices said his company is prepping the OS for the home, and we’ll first see Android in digital picture frames, according to a story today in the NY Times. Art Swift, vice president of marketing at MIPS Technologies, lauded Android for its simplicity and ease of use (although it will need to be tweaked to play back HD video)… Read on at Gigaom.com

We’ve nothing much to go on outside of a few good renders and a smattering of machine translated paragraphs, but it sure sounds as if China Mobile is entertaining the idea of bringing a 7-inch AndroidAndroid-based tablet to its airwaves. As the story goes, said slate would boast China’s homegrown TD-SCDMA 3G connectivity, support for video calling, a full-fledged web browser and an OPhone operating system — which is essentially a customized version of Android for the Chinese market. Sadly, no further information was given, leaving us to wonder what kind of innards are scheduled for implant and what kind of price tag / release date we’re looking at. Oh, and those “call” and “end call” buttons are pretty darn evident, leading us to believe that China Mobile might actually expect you to use this as your primary mobile. Can you say… Sidetalkin’? Read on at engadget.com