Multitouch for Android this year

One of the main reasons to pick an iPhone or Palm Pre over one of their Android rivals is multitouch: Apple has it, Palm has it, Android doesn’t. But that could soon change, if some web speculation proves accurate.

CNET claims there could be two updates to Android this year: Android 1.6 (aka Donut) and Android 2.0 (aka Eclair). Donut is a fairly minor update of the firmware but Android 2.0 should be a biggie.

Apparently it will debut on a handset before becoming available to download on existing Android devices. CNET reckons this could be a Motorola phone, which we can see happening: it’s well known that Moto has plans for an Android-powered handset, and there’s even talk that it’s working on its own Blur UI to sit on top of Android. CNET’s bet is on a phone called the Motorola Sholes becoming the Android 2.0 flagship.

But what about multitouch, we hear you cry. Well, apparently the evidence for that comes courtesy of some new code dropped into the Android Open Source Project by Google. Some code for multitouch has been spotted by developers – but not for Donut. This has lead CNET to speculate that multitouch will be part of Eclair/Android 2.0.

There are a lot of “what ifs” in this story, but we can definitely see Google adding multitouch soon in an effort to keep up with Apple. We’ll keep you posted.

(Via Electricpig)

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