Ever since the announcement of the iPhone 4 and it’s video calling service FaceTime the world has fallen in love with the idea of seeing the person on the other end of the line face-to-face. Others have tried to duplicate this feature but no matter what happens it requires you both to be running the same app, which could be troublesome for many. However, if recent reports are correct, Android 2.x/3.x (Gingerbread) will focus on video calling as well as an improved user interface.

The first Android-based handset to feature a front-facing camera was the HTC EVO 4G. Now at the time the Android SDK did not support video calling, so Sprint went to Qik to develop a way to bring it to end users. Many applications followed suit with Fring adding support via their app, and Yahoo! rumored to be bringing the service to it’s mobile app.

However, many would love a video calling option built into the Android platform itself. Word is that Android engineers are currently working to bring Google Talk Video to the mobile operating system, this would open up not only mobile-to-mobile calling but also calling to computers or other IM clients on different operating systems.

When asked about the possibility of video chat on Android, Andy Rubin responded:

“We support video chat today, with Google Talk Video. It works on the desktop. Whether that can be repurposed and made appropriate for sipping bandwidth for mobile, it’s an exercise that’s underway.”

With the upcoming array of phones with front-facing cameras we can reasonably expect some sort of video calling option built into an upcoming release of Android.

[Via AndroidAndMe]