As Google just recently announced the Nexus S from Samsung, which is running the new Android 2.3, known as Gingerbread, I wanted to have a look at the new OS for myself.

Gingerbread comes with lots of new nice features and improvements, you can read about them here. Or you can watch the official video, to get a quick overview:

Altough testing the OS in an AVD, does not compare to the real device in terms of speed and awesomeness, It is the closest you can get right now.

Getting Android 2.3 up and running on your computer is an easy task, I previously created a very simple-to-follow tutorial how to get started with Android development. Installing Android 2.3 is much the same thing, so I assume you are coming from that guide, or already has a development environment set up.

Here is what we need to do:

  • We must first update our Eclipse ADT.
  • Then we must install SDK updates in our SDK and AVD manager.
  • We then create a new AVD with Android 2.3, and run it.

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