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I was up in San Francisco earlier this week for the Google I/O event, and as expected, Android played a big part in the proceedings. A number of big announcements involving the platform were made, and it was also interesting to see that at the I/O Developer Sandbox (the closest thing the event has to an expo floor), the section showing off Android tools, services and devices was bigger than any of the others focused on other Google areas of interest.

There were three big pieces of Android news:

• Version 2.2 of the platform, named Froyo, was formally announced. Many of the features of 2.2 had been going around the web for a few weeks, but this was its formal introduction. Engadget has a good rundown of all the new features, including Flash support in the browser, the ability to store apps on external memory. Froyo also supports tethering and mobile hotspot services, and is significantly faster, both in UI and the browser, than earlier versions. It should be available for the...