Major ROM Update for Android to Come Soon

Still no word on a release date, but the coveted stereo Bluetooth and video recording features will soon come to Android, leaving the iPhone as the lone consumer smartphone at this time to not offer video recording nor Bluetooth stereo support for use with Bluetooth headphones for listening to music.

According to Electronista, the update, named Cupcake, will add a video recording mode that also lets users specify how they will share the content and play the video back directly, rather than the streaming-only feature of today. A mention has been made of sharing, though whether Android phones will support uploading to YouTube or other sites isn't mentioned.

Also of note is the A2DP and AVRCP support for controlling and listening music via stereo Bluetooth headphones or playing music through a Bluetooth car system.

Mobile Crunch lists the complete laundry list of features for the G1 handset as:

* Browser: Copy/Paste, (Hold the shift key, highlight the text with a drag or the trackball, release shift. Ta-da!), inline search (Find text on the page you’re looking at), support for the ultra hasty SquirrelFish javascript engine
* Stereo Bluetooth (A2DP) profile support, Bluetooth Remote Control (AVRCP) support
* “Basic x86 support” - this is a bit ambiguous, but it implies that Android will be able to run (natively) to some extent on the processors used by most modern computers. While that theoretically opens the door to Android netbooks, it’s not clear what all this entails
* “Input method framework, for soft keyboards and other on-screen input methods” with the ability for third parties to make their own onscreen keyboards.
* Perhaps most notably (Hell, I’d do a drumroll if the title hadn’t already spoiled it): Video recording.