Google demos Donut - Android 2.0

Google recently updated Android to version 1.5, Cupcake, for owners of the T-Mobile G1, and it came installed as standard on the HTC Magic. Now it seems that it's already prepared to start showing off version 2.0 - Donut.

Demoed at Google's I/O event, the forthcoming updates new features appear to include "Android Search", a text-to-speech engine and handwriting gestures.

Android Search will be a universal search across the whole device. Type in a phrase and any results from your documents, calendars or other apps, or online will show up.

The text-to-speech API should allow developers to include similar functionality to that of Google Voice Search in their own applications. Until now, programmers haven't had that access.

Lastly, Google demonstrated handwriting gestures for use in searching through lists. The company drew a letter "e" and a list of songs skipped through to that point.

Other than that, the interface appears to be rather similar at this stage. We'll certainly hear more as the release date approaches, so stay tuned for further info.