Google is planning the next version of Andriod. Dubbed Android 1.5 the new version promises better camera and GPS performance, support for video recording and Bluetooth stereo. Also included in this new version is support for soft keyboards, live folders and speech recognition.

Looking at the spec it seems that software developers will have the option to target different Android platform versions from within a single SDK installation. They will also find improvements to install Android SDK add-ons to access extended functionality that might be provided by OEMs, carriers, or other providers.

Google is publishing a series of articles on its Android Developers Blog to highlight new APIs in a bit to get developers writing applications. Topics covered include OpenGL, asynchronous tasks, system settings, and new Activity callbacks.

As far as users are concerned, Android 1.5 will have improved performances which will allow for faster camera start-up and image capture, faster acquisition of GPS location.  Page page scrolling in the browser, and speedier GMail conversation list scrolling are all a big plus.

What is stalling the spread of the Android at the moment is the fact that there are only two phones which use the open source operating system. The HTC Dream (T-Mobile G1) and Vodafone's HTC Magic. That is set to change soon when Samsung launches three Android phones this year. We are still waiting to hear from other supporters of the Android OS LG, Motorola and Sony Ericsson.