Today foursquare released an update to their app for Android phones. It’s snappier and reveals a few of the new features that will be making their way to the other official foursquare apps in the near future.

The feature that stands out most is the display of recommended tips when you check in to a venue — whether they’re from your friends or not. Other foursquare apps have popped up tips from your friends after you check in, letting you know the things they recommend at the venue, but this update takes it one step further by showing popular tips from any user. And it doesn’t just show the most popular tip by number of times it’s been marked “I’ve done this,” but the one it thinks will be most helpful to you. It’s another step in foursquare’s move to become a crowd-sourced city guide — complete with recommendations — that’s useful for any user, not just those who have a lot of friends or follow a lot of brands.

Foursquare’s Trophy Case, released to the website last month, makes its first appearance on mobile in this version. As in the desktop version, you can now separate the foursquare badges from the partner ones.

The last change will be a welcome one for developers using the foursquare API. It’s now able to show the source of each checkin in your friends list. This means you’ll now know if a friend checked in using one of foursquare’s native apps, or one of the apps built on top of the API, like Untappd, Social Currency or even Gowalla. Twitter and Facebook both offer similar notices on their platforms; it’s a good way to help other apps gain exposure. It currently only shows apps that are using v2 of the API, which is still officially in private beta.

This is just the first wave of changes we can expect to see from foursquare this month. Other features rumored to be making their way to both the iPhone and Android apps in the next few weeks include photos and the ability to comment on checkins.

What do you think of the new features in the Android app?

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