Android 3.0 Gingerbread rumored to launch in October for high-end devices

While a lot of people are still waiting for Android 2.2 Froyo to arrive on their phones, new details about the next update, Android 3.0 Gingerbread, have started making the rounds online. The new OS will supposedly arrive in October, followed by new handsets in November and December.

According to mobile site Unwired View, details of Gingerbread were revealed in a Russian-only podcast by Eldar Murtazin of mobile-review.com.

Now that you know where the rumors are coming from, let's take a look at the good stuff:

• Gingerbread will only run on high-end Android phones (1GHZ CPUs and better), while the less powerful, more affordable phones will still use 2.1 or Froyo.
• There's an all-new UI that reportedly looks a lot like the Nexus One's Gallery app.
• Gingerbread supports a resolution of 1280x760 for larger displays, 4" and up. That sounds more like a tablet feature than a phone feature, eh?

As Unwiredview points out, this might spell doom for the various device-specific third-party UI shells that are floating around out there. Froyo devices will still have them, of course, but Gingerbread users can expect a more consistent UI across devices.
[via Mobiputing]

Tags: android, android3.0, gingerbread, google, mobile, osupdates