By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Verizon and Motorola weren't the only companies making big announcements at the Droid X debut today. Google's CEO and President Eric Schmidt and Vice President of Engineering Andy Rubin were both present. Following the introduction of the Droid X, Rubin officially announced the open sourcing of Anrdoid 2.2 also known as "Froyo."

Typically, when Google drops the open source version of Android, it means a wave of upgrades to existing handsets will follow soon after.

"Today, there are 60 compatible Android devices," Rubin said, "delivered via a global partnership network of 21 OEMs and 59 carriers in 49 countries. The volume and variety of Android devices continues to exceed even our most optimistic expectations. In some instances, Android devices are selling faster than they can be manufactured. To celebrate, we are open sourcing the new 2.2 version of Android, which we call Froyo, to our partners who manufacture Android devices around the world. Customers will enjoy great new features and improved browser performance. And developers will benefit from new tools such as Android cloud-to-device messaging (which makes it easier for mobile applications to sync data)."

Froyo delivers a decent number of upgrades and improvements, but there are ten aspects to the version that are most noteworthy. They include: Improved speed, better enterprise support, tethering, a new browser, cloud-to-device sync, SD-bootable apps, app auto-updating, flash and AIR support, music sync, and a new Web-based Android Market.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010