The past week has certainly been a busy one for Google: they unveiled both Gingerbread and the Nexus S, showed off a prototype Motorola Honeycomb tablet, and announced that there are now 300,000 Android devices being activated every day. Just because it's the weekend doesn't mean that Google is going to rest, though, as they've just unveiled the new look for the Android Market. There are a number of new features, so we're going to break them down bullet-style:
- The tab-based interface that we've grown accustomed to is out, and it's been replaced by a carousel of apps with just a single page of information
- The maximum size of an app has been upped to 50MB
- When you buy apps in the future, you'd better decide quick whether you're happy with your purchase: the app return period has been cut from 24 hours to 15 minutes
- Google recognized the popularity of widgets and live wallpapers in the market and saw fit to give them their own categories in the Market
- A number of tweaks have been made under the hood to help users see only apps compatible with their devices
The new Android Market will be rolled out to all devices running Android 1.6 or higher over the next two weeks. While there wasn't anything particularly bad about the old Android Market, I have to say that this new version looks quite a bit more modern and should mesh well with Gingerbread's refined design. Some users will likely be unhappy with the considerably shortened return period, but 15 minutes seems like a reasonable amount of time to mess around with an app and decide whether or not you want to keep it. Just about every Android device will be getting the new Market, so be sure to come back when you get the update and let us know what you think!
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