Rumour: Android 2.4 on the way

Just when you thought the melting pot of Android version numbers was chock full of mobile goodness, here's another couple of digits to throw in - version 2.4 of Google's mobile OS is reportedly not only real, but already chugging along on a Sony Ericsson device. A keen-eyed reporter at Dutch site Tweakers.net got a hands-on with the newly-announced Sony Xperia Arc, and quickly noticed that the OS on the device wasn't quite the Gingerbread treat they had been promised. A quick note - those of you without the ability to read Dutch may want to check out Android Police's summary of the lengthy Tweakers.net article. From their brief time with the ''new'' OS, the Tweakers reporter apparently found a noticeable speed increase when compared to Gingerbread, along with new animations including one ''reminiscent of the Genie effect in Mac OS X.'' Also new was a ''noise reduction'' option for voice calls and references to video chat in menus. With photographic evidence to back up their claims, it is entirely possible that Tweakers.net have stumbled upon the next - albeit minor - update to the phone branch of Android. Whatever the case, the question remains - with version 3.0 having already snapped up the Honeycomb name, how would Google maintain its alphabetical naming scheme with 2.4? Meantime, those of you with a thing for numbers will be pleased to know that a month after Google officially introduced Android 2.3 ''Gingerbread'', that version is active on 0.4% of Android handsets, according to the company's latest data.

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