New version of Google Android

Internet giant Google has released a preview of the next version of its open-source Android operating system for mobile phones.

“Android 1.5 introduces APIs (application programming interfaces) for features such as [on-screen] soft keyboards, home screen widgets, live folders and speech recognition,” Google software engineer Xavier Ducrohet said in a blog post.

Ducrohet also says that Google’s own applications such as YouTube and Gmail have been enhanced, while developers should be excited over the system’s new interface.

“To help you prepare your applications for the release of Android 1.5 on phones, over the next few weeks we’ll be publishing a series of articles on this blog to highlight new APIs and other changes,” he said.

The announcement was geared towards developers, as Android is completely open-source and has a large community of software programmers creating their own widgets and applications.

While the Android operating system is in its infancy, there are talks of expansion. Computer manufacturer Hewlett-Packard has reportedly been investigating whether Android would be suitable for a range of netbooks.