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Last month Google withheld access to the latest version of the SDK to all but 50 programmers who won an application design competition. The move frustrated those developers left in the dark, with some posting on Google's own discussion board that they felt "cheated and betrayed".

However, a beta version of the Android SDK 0.9 is now available to the general public, sporting "tons of bug fixes" according to a post on the Google Android blog.

The software also introduces a range of new features as well as an updated user interface. Several new applications are included; a calculator, alarm clock, camera, music

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player, image viewer and SMS messaging tool.

Google claims that many of the changes are direct responses to feedback received after it released an early preview of the SDK in November last year.

The company has also unveiled a development roadmap for the operating system which will finally see the source code released under an open source licence in the fourth quarter of this year, along with the launch of the first commercial Android products. The timeline also mentions a second developer challenge which will be held before the end of the year.

It is widely expected that the HTC Dream will be the first commercial product to use the open source operating system. A video of the device was leaked online earlier this month and the FCC this week granted approval for the sale of the handset in the US.

HTC had tried to stop details of the device emerging prior to its launch, asking the FTC to refrain from releasing specifications as "public disclosure of ... documents might be harmful to our company and would give competitor[s] an unfair advantage in the market".

However, subsequent documents have revealed that the handset will feature two cameras, a QWERTY keyboard and support for GSM, EDGE and HSDPA, as well as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.