The HTC G2 smartphone hasn’t hit the streets yet, but a leaked copy of the phone’s firmware has. And among other things, the Android phone appears to have a new version of the Google Voice application, which doesn’t just let you make and receive calls and text messages by opening the app — you can also access some features through a new Home Screen widget.

The new Google Voice Settings widget has four buttons. You can use it to open the Google Voice app, start composing a text message, toggle “do not disturb” mode, or toggle whether Google Voice should be used only for international calls.

There’s also a Google Voice Inbox widget which shows you a preview of your latest message. You can tap the text to open Google Voice and see the whole message, or hit the arrow buttons to flip through messages.

Like the new widgets, but don’t want to have to buy a new phone to get them? The folks at xda-developers have got you covered. Forum member MvP77 has extracted the installer file from the G2 ROM, and the new Google Voice app is available for download. You’ll need to register for the forums to download the file.

The new Google Voice app actually replaces the existing app on your phone, rather than simply adding widgets. But overall, the widgets appear to be the only new features.

Fancy Widget is a home screen widget for Google Android that pretty much duplicates the time and weather widget that ships with HTC Sense UI. So it probably shouldn’t come as any surprise that HTC has complained to the developer.

In response, Fancy Widget 1.2.2 will be the last version of the widget that looks like the HTC Sense widget. It’s still available in the Android Market, but not for long. If you want it, you’d best go and grab it now.

The developer does plan to offer a new version soon with a new look.

via EuroDroid

Google has released a Google Buzz widget for Android. In a nutshell, this means you can update your Google Buzz status from your Android home screen. You can also take a photo with your camera or upload images from your gallery using the widget. And since you’re using a mobile Buzz client, you can tag your updates with the location where you were when you posted.

To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of Google Buzz, because the last thing I need is yet another social network — even if it’s one that’s designed to help you keep track of updtes from my contacts using other sites such as Twitter, Flickr, Picasa, and Gmail. But if you are a Buzz user, you might want to check out the new widget.

It’s available for Android 1.6 and later. You should be able to find the widget by searching for “Google Buzz” in the Android Market.