The folks behind the Linaro open source software project have put a little time into tweaking Google Android to use the gcc 4.7 toolchain. The result is a version of Android that can perform many tasks between 30 and 100 percent faster than the version of Android Google 4.0 Google currently offers through the AOSP (Android Open Source Project).

While it’s not clear whether Google will implement the changes anytime soon, third party developers are already starting to take advantage of Linaro’s optimizations.

The developers behind the popular CyanogenMod custom ROM have started work to incorporate Linaro’s tweaks, and one developer has already compiled his own build of Linaro Android 4.0 for the Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone.

Early reports are that it delivers as promised, offering much speedier overall performance — which is pretty impressive, because it’s not like Android 4.0 felt particularly sluggish on reasonably fast hardware such as the Galaxy Nexus.

I’ll be especially interested to see what these improvements offer for devices with slower CPUs, such as the MK802 and other tablets and devices with ARM Cortex-A8 processors.

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