This is getting exciting. As more and more news of the Cupcake Update for Android comes in, we can't help but believe that it's going to freshen up the platform and provide developers with more avenues to create applications. Here are some of the latest screenshots of Cupcake and some of the new features it'll include.
The biggest draw of the Cupcake Update, for me at least, is the virtual onscreen keyboard--some folks are still wary of soft keyboards but I believe it offers tremendous convenience and versatility. Obviously in order to succeed it needs a great auto-correct feature and a customizable dictionary but I think it'll help the Android platform expand.
According to developer Arron La, Cupcake is very rough around the edges. This doesn't bode particularly well considering we want our Cupcake now! But we'll give the Android team ample time to figure out all the kinks so that they can release a polished product.
Included in these new screenshots of Cupcake are some new features [via Arron La]:
1. New Local Setting Page - Gives you option to pick different locales and pick different text inputs. 2. New Option to view running and third party applications - An option to view running and third party applications from the normal application list. Does not provide a way to terminate them. 3. New windows opening/closing animation effect - a new popping effect when windows are opened/closed. 4. New default notepad - a very simple and ugly default notepad. 5. New Global Time application - not sure if it will be provided by T-Mobile but it's just a rotating Earth and I couldn't get it to do anything else. 6. New Spare Parts Application - Once again not sure if the official version will have this, but it provides a number of extra settings such as setting windows animation and transition animation speed, font size, end button behavior and etc. It also has a "display rotation" option which supposedly should allow auto-rotate base on orientation across the entire os, but it is not currently working. 7. New Virtual Keyboard - The virtual keyboard will pop up on every edit box. I didn't feel any haptic feedback but I am thinking that it's just not there on the example keyboard. Because the phone does not auto-rotate (an option exists but it doesn't work), it's very hard to type on it. The sample keyboard also does not provide auto-corrections. 8. Slightly better looking buttons with more shadow.
After the jump, more screenshots of the Cupcake Update to Android!
[via IntoMobile]
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