[...] not give me a clear cut answer on when these phones might receive Android 1.6. They said Sprint might not offer OTA upgrades and all mentioned the file size of updates as being the problem. As some of our readers pointed [...]

[...] have written extensively about the Sprint OTA issue and have been working tirelessly to get an official statement from Sprint. Both of their Android [...]

[...] have written extensively about the Sprint OTA issue and have been working tirelessly to get an official statement from Sprint. Both of their Android [...]

You’re confusing things, Sheil. Palm rolls out the updates through Sprint’s internal lab known as SEBU for testing and final approval, then the lab pushes them out through Sprint’s servers for distribution over the air.

Man, for the last time, Sprint did not do the Palm Pre updates, it was Palm that performed those updates. Sprint had nothing to do with those. Palm used their OTA servers.

[...] not give me a clear cut answer on when these phones might receive Android 1.6. They said Sprint might not offer OTA upgrades and all mentioned the file size of updates as being the problem. As some of our readers pointed [...]

Mike –
I did add another line to my contract and through a corporate discount program I’m affiliated with I was able to purchase the Hero for only $30.00 – no typo – $30.00!! I swapped it out to my existing line that had the Pre on it and bought a used Samsung Instinct for the new line for my mother-in-law! She’s tickled pink just to have a touch screen! Everyone is happy!! Plus I feel a little more secure now that I have a ‘spare’ phone around – just in case….

Sprint does OTA updates just fine. I also have a Pre and the last update was 87.7mb.

I have a Pre too, and picking up my Hero Tomorrow, which I am extremely excited about. I had opened up a new line, which I already had a phone for last month, I got a new phone any how just for a backup. Now I am returning that phone and paying the 80 dollar difference to get the Hero. I will just have to switch back and forth between Pre and Hero to determine which Phone I want. I hope that the Hero syncs well with my exchange server…and I don’t have to enter in my pin every 3 minutes like I do on the pre…

Below are the nominal differences between 1.5 and 1.6, according to Google’s Android Developers’ SDK.

It would be really nice to know which 1.6 features (other than CDMA support) are included in the builds for HTC Hero and Samsung Moment.

-Mark

New User Features
- Quick Search Box
- New Camera/Camcorder UI
- new Battery Usage Indicator
- VPN, 802.1x
- Android Market Updates and New Android Market UI
- Expanded Search Framework
- Text-to-speech engine “Pico”
- New Gesture framework, GestureBuilder
- New Accessibility framework and accessibility services
- New version of OpenCore 2 media engine
* Support for OpenMAX encoders
* Support for additional audio codecs in AuthorEngine
* Improved buffering model supports shared buffers allocated in the decoder

- 2.6.29 Linux kernel

New API Features:

- Expanded support for screen densities and resolutions
- New permissions for CHANGE_WIFI_MULTICAST_STATE, INSTALL_LOCATION_PROVIDER, READ_HISTORY_BOOKMARKS, WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE, and WRITE_HISTORY_BOOKMARKS.
- Graphics – Classes in android.graphics now support scaling for different screen densities.
- Telephony – New SmsManager and other classes for sending and receiving SMS messages.
- Utilities – New DisplayMetrics fields for determining the density of the current device screen.

- New Framework APIs – Added packages:
* android.accessibilityservice
* android.gesture
* android.speech.tts
* android.view.accessibility

- Framework API’s – Changed Packages:
* android
* android.app
* android.content
* android.content.pm
* android.content.res
* android.graphics
* android.graphics.drawable
* android.hardware
* android.inputmethodservice
* android.location
* android.media
* android.net.wifi
* android.opengl
* android.os
* android.provider
* android.telephony
* android.telephony.gsm
* android.test
* android.test.mock
* android.text.style
* android.util
* android.view
* android.view.animation
* android.widget
* java.lang
* java.net
* java.util