Woke up this morning and was quite surprised to see a major update for my phone waiting – Gingerbread! That’s Android 2.3 for the uninitiated. I was a bit surprised, as I figured it had been long enough that I probably wasn’t getting it. I fired up the install and am now running from the new build. The first thing you notice will be the notification bar and interface. It’s no longer white but black, with green and gray. I know some people were bothered by the white bar, so there you go. It is supposed to run faster and be a touch better at saving your battery – that remains to be seen for me.
There are a few quirks. I charge my phone at work via the USB cable. I had to install drivers for this to work after the Gingerbread update. This may not be possible for all of you in a corporate environment, so be aware you may want a wall plug option. Some others have noted other charging issues, but I haven’t yet.
The new keyboard – be aware you won’t see all the new features unless you select the Android keyboard from input method (in settings or long press on a field you can type in). I like Swype, so I’m sticking with that myself. Unfortunately the new copy/paste kind of takes over there as well, I will see if I can get rid of that.
The phone and some of the slower apps do seem a bit snappier in response, though whether that is just me looking for them to be faster since that’s part of the update, I can’t tell. Fruit Ninja seems to lag less, and the Yahoo! Fantasy Football app seems light-years better, so take from that what you will.
Should you do this update? My answer would be a qualified yes. The charging thing is annoying, as the less tech savvy people out there will have a difficult time getting the drivers installed, and the keyboard quirks could confuse. For me, though, it seems to be a pretty solid upgrade for my LG Optimus S.
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