Video Chat May Come To Android Gingerbread

The speculation begins with a comment made by Google's own vice president of engineering Andy Rubin in a recent interview. The initial question asked if the search engine giant planned to integrate Gizmo5 VOIP technology into Google Voice, however Rubin danced around the answer by saying it was something for the Google Voice team to answer. He also indicated that wireless operators would need to be considered before launching a full-blown VOIP service.

Currently Android consumers can use Fring and Qik for video chatting, however phones with front-facing cameras are minimal at best-- the current HTC EVO 4G offers a front-facing camera with additional phones by HTC, Samsung and Motorola on the way. By the time they roll out onto the market, Gingerbread may be baked and ready to serve--video chat intact.

In addition to video chatting, Gingerbread will reportedly "change the way we use our phones" offering a new user interface, HTML5 support, optimizations for awesome mobile gaming, and more. It's still up in the air about Gingerbread's actual version number, currently floating between 2.3, 2.5, and 3.0. The OS update was also originally slated for a Q4 2010 release, however that may have been pushed back to early 2011 along with the associated devices.