Froyo’s Unsung Improvements

So, you’ve waited and waited and still no magical over-the-air Froyo sent to your Nexus One? I always feel like I’m last in line at Google, despite my entire world being married to its almighty cloud. So, I took matters into my own hands. I haven’t rooted my Nexus One because I paid a chunk of change for this unlocked beast, so I waited for the leak of a final, stable Froyo build that would work on my late edition EPE54B firmware (that’s the newest stock AT&T version of the N1). The manual instructions are beyond easy, especially if you come from the world of flash-happy Windows Mobile. I must admit I was slightly nervous, despite having flashed my old Fuze no less than 100 times because, well, my Nexus One’s standard issue firmware was both slick and stable, and I didn’t want to rock the boat unnecessarily. I figured a manual update wasn’t too risky, and I couldn’t resist the lure of Google’s latest dessert. The flash worked like a champ, and I was up and running in less than 15 minutes. All the heavily touted new features were finally at my fingertips, but what’s really impressed me are the subtle changes and fixes. That annoying glitch with Google Voice, where your contact pictures got zapped if you happened to sync your contacts with Facebook…fixed! My biggest complaint about the Android keyboard was the inefficient access to punctuation other than the ubiquitous period. Now a row of commonly used punctuation marks appears just above where you type. Awesome. Also slightly annoying was the fact that on Android 2.1, Google Talk would alert you when someone messaged you, but if you happened to pick up the conversation on your desktop, you were stuck with only that initial message when you switched back to your phone. With Froyo, the Google Talk application syncs up real time with whatever conversations you have on your desktop Gmail or Google Talk clients. The overall speed is improved, although I didn’t really have any complaints in that department, but the biggest coup of all is the battery life. I’m not sure what magical gremlins the gods at Google unleashed on the battery problem, but if you’ve picked up any Android device in the last year, you can practically watch the battery drain just holding the phone in your hand and staring at it. It would have been a deal-breaker had the spare battery not been so cheap. But, since My Froyo update, I’ve put this beast through its paces and noticed drastic improvements in staying power. Even streamed World Cup from it at work thanks to the beta Flash release for Froyo, and it only knocked off a few percentage points. Anyone noticed any other subtle improvements?