So thanks to some ingenious folks, I managed to install, what feels like a pre-release version, Froyo onto my Nexus One. The link to the upgrade image on the Google server is gone, but if you search hard enough, you will probably find a mirror somewhere.

There are already too many blog posts, videos out there on the broad improvements in Froyo, but for me, it was a little fix that brought a smile to my face.

Gtalk synch (almost)! I love that Gtalk messages typed on the laptop browser now appears in the mobile version automatically. It’s not a biggie like having Flash or a faster browser but it was rather annoying when it didn’t before. I frequently connect on both the laptop and the mobile at the same time and it’s nice to be able to pick up the mobile and continue the conversation without skipping a beat.

I do wish that the Gtalk messages from the mobile will sync automatically back to the browser chat window but half a loaf is heck-a-lot more than none.

Another cool feature, which incidentally was demo-ed during Google I/O 2010, is the Google Phone to Chrome function. This is supposedly arriving with the next version of Android, 3.0 “Gingerbread”, but an alpha-ish implementation is already available for Froyo with the Chrome to Phone extension. A really handy method to send website links to the phone and the setup instructions are relatively easy to follow.