Google Android 2.3 Gingerbread has got its first official upgrade that brings in native support for video calling over Gtalk. So now no more third party applications will be required for video calling on Android 2.3 devices.
The first batch of Android 2.3.4, which can be manually updated, is available exclusively for Samsung Nexus S devices world over including India. In the UK and the USA it is available over the air, which means that the service providers will upgrade the OS automatically.
However, there is no news on when this video calling functionality will come to earlier Android 2.1 and 2.2 based devices.
After the update, users can do video chat with all the people on their chat list provided they too have an Android 2.3 Gingerbread device with the 2.3.4 update installed.
To manually install, first click here to download the update from the Android website.
Then connect your Nexus S to your computer via USB and select Mass Storage mode form the screen prompt. Copy the downloaded the file to the root of your phone’s USB storage.
Then turn off the phone. Hold the volume up button and then press the power button to power on the phone in bootloader mode. Use the volume buttons to move up and down, highlight “Recovery” and select it by clicking the power button.
The phone will have to restart again. You’ll see another icon on the screen that has a triangle and an exclamation mark in it. Once again, hold the power button and then press volume up to bring up another list of options. Pick “Apply update from SD Card” and hit the power button again to select it. If the installation went okay, it will prompt you that the patch was applied.