Typically, as an OS evolves over time, it becomes more bloated and bogs down older hardware. Most people don’t feel the effect since they eventually upgrade their hardware which gives them a significant performance boost. But things don’t seem to add up on the Android platform. With every new release, Google has managed to add in more optimizations into Android, giving older handset users a breath of new life. With Android 2.2 right around the corner, it would appear as though Google will again make a huge stride in improving the underlying speed of the OS.

Ian Douglas from Armor Games has just posted up images of the benchmark app Linpack running on the latest Android 2.2 build on the Nexus One. Stock Android 2.1 on the Nexus One is able to hit a 6-7 MFLOPS benchmark score, but with Android 2.2 loaded up, the Nexus One benchmark score jumps nearly 700% to 38-40 MFLOPS.

The increased performance is credited to the new Delvik JIT compiler which Google is expected to include in the core 2.2 Android Froyo update that should be released before June. Google is expected to reveal a little more info next week at Google I/O in their “A JIT compiler for Android’s Dalvik VM” session. The Nexus One is probably going to be the first handset to get the new Android 2.2 build, but we should see the 2.2 update roll out to most phones that get the Android 2.1 update. Just don’t ask us when.

Source: Android and Me