Three days ago, some of you no doubt opened a present and were surprised (or not, depending on how many hints you dropped) to find an Android phone inside.  Now, while we’re sure you’re capable of reading the manual and experimenting, here’s a collection of Android tips straight from Google.

Interestingly, these pointers come from Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior Vice President of Product Management and one of only nine executive officers, rather than some Android engineer.  Then one other thing we’ll note: some of the tips just apply to Android 2.3 (AKA Gingerbread).

So on to the suggestions.  Rosenberg recommended, "Tell your phone what to do by pressing the microphone icon next to the search box on the home screen, or long press the magnifying glass.  You can tell it to send an email or text message (‘send text to mom, see you for pizza at 7’), call someone (‘call mom’), navigate somewhere (‘navigate to pizza’), or listen to music (‘listen to Mamma Mia’)."

Later, Rosenberg wrote, "To copy/paste from a webpage, long press some text, drag the handles around to select the text you want to copy, and press somewhere in the highlighted region. To paste, simply long press a text entry box and select paste.  Gmail is a bit different: you need to go to Menu > More > Select Text."

Furthermore, "In Gingerbread (and supported hardware), you can Shift+Key to capitalize a letter instead of going to a separate all caps keyboard."

Then a long list of app recommendations Rosenberg went through included Angry Birds, Astro, Chrome to Phone, Flash, Fruit Ninja, FXCamera, Google Maps, Instant Heart Rate, Phoneanlyzr, RemoteDroid, Shazam, SoundHound, Tango, and YouTube.

More tips are available on the Official Google Blog if you’re interested.  Just try not kill your phone’s battery while getting familiar with the device.