[Banekin]

I don't understand why people expected so much from Gingerbread in the first place. So they expect Google to only release updates with massive feature additions? Personally I would rather have small incremental updates than nothing at all.

[jsz0]

Competition. Apple stepped it up in iOS4 and has continued adding user facing features in each point release since -- HDR, Game Center, AirPlay, AirPrint, etc. Then you have WM7 with, at minimum, a very attractive GUI. RIM has some eye-candy stuff on the way with the PlayBook GUI. I think the big disappointment is that Google hasn't been able to spruce up the Android UI. We're starting to drift into this uncomfortable Windows Mobile 6.x territory where the UI is clunky, somewhat difficult to use, and just not all that nice looking. In my opinion at least...

[nimrody]

Even the hardware manufacturers expect big improvements in every release.

Integrating a new release, testing and verifying correct operation of a cell phone is a long and costly procedure. This is why many phones still don't have an update for 2.2.

So cell phone makes would prever big upgrades with many new features -- but release infrequently.

The "release early, release often" mantra just doesn't suit this type of market.

[yanw]

It has massive new features: SIP support, gyroscope support, NFC support in addition to the various Dalvik and NDK upgrades and APIs.

Feature-set was never a problem for Android. The UI didn't get an overhaul though, just nips and tucks, and is the only quarrel in that post. Personally I like the Android UI specially after the black/green/orange refinements in 2.3.