[Merged] Google Android Mobile Phone OS / Platform Project

[Michael CM1]

Google's gphone will be based on completely open platform.

So is Linux. What is its marketshare among PCs? Yah.

Android also doesn't have a device to run on yet. I also haven't heard much more than it's going to be made by Google, run on some mobile phone, and is called Android. It's also 2 years from even existing. That's a lotta time in the tech world.

Eventually, the smartphone market will probably dwindle to iPhones, BlackBerrys, and everything else. I can't find two people who will say good things about the same product from any smartphone maker not called Apple or RIM.

If someone tries to pitch a phone with Windows Mobile to me, i will kick them in the

 

[guruji]

you forgot PALM - the first King.

 

[skubish]

you forgot PALM - the first King.

haha! Its a wonder they are still in business.

 

[MyJelleo]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

didnt palm do pretty well with sales with its cheaper products?

 

[spikefood]

Quiet frankly the way I see the iPhone going in just the next few months is amazing (corp. support, 3G, SDK, ect). Two years from now the iPhone will probably control the majority of the market share for smart phones.

 

[7on]

Quiet frankly the way I see the iPhone going in just the next few months is amazing (corp. support, 3G, SDK, ect). Two years from now the iPhone will probably control the majority of the market share for smart phones.

Except for people on Sprint, Verizon, and T-mo

 

[javadh]

Google's Android Come To Life!

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9953924-7.html?tag=cnetfd.mt

Google shows off Android, have you considered it? does it have any chance to compete with Apple and Blackberry in the smart phone market? is it the iPhone killer?

 

[extraextra]

I think OS-wise it might be a strong competitor, but that's good because it'll encourage Apple to step up their game and always be innovative.

Phone design-wise, who knows? I remember reading something about how Samsung and LG were making phones for Android, but I don't remember exactly.

 

[kdarling]

It'd be nice if the folks over at xda get android onto existing handsets. I'd be all over that

I believe someone already showed off running Android as a process under Windows Mobile.

But yeah, I agree. I was rather disappointed that Google hadn't already ported Android to a ton of current smartphones when it was announced.

Just imagine if everyone could've reflashed their phones and started running Android last fall.

It's a good bet that Android helped push Jobs into finally allowing third party apps.

 

[retroneo]

[Merged] Google Android Mobile Phone OS / Platform Project

Coming along nicely, first devices still scheduled for late this year.

Some different ideas in the interface. Multitouch UIs are going to be interesting with Apple, Microsoft, Google and S60 currently developing their own take on interfaces.

Check it out:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=arXolJrLVEg

 

[DreamPod]

I like the parallax-scrolling wallpaper background, I wish you could give the iPhone a real wallpaper (without jailbreaking it).

 

[ruinfx]

the google streetview + compass feature is badass

 

[kleo]

Honestly i Love my iPhone but some of the stuff shown in the video beats it hands down. Slide to unlock becomes a visual password, AMAZING. I was sold when he did the status bar pull down. If this was out before the iPhone apple would have used this as there mobile OS, no doubt about it.

 

[Michael CM1]

It looks like the iPhone OS heavily Googlized and with a hint of Windows.

Like I've said before, I don't get the big deal about Android. Google has never made an OS before and it was supposedly some OOOH AHHH thing before it had even been created.

It sure as hell looks better than Windows Mobile (what doesn't?), but it looks mostly like a ripoff of the iPhone with like two features you might want extra. The guy obviously said "fling" instead of "flick" on purpose. It was like watching a Microsoft video for Vista where they had "gadgets" instead of "widgets."

So like I said, nothing too great. It's likely that the iPhone OS 2.0 will allow you to do some similar things, like the background. I'll stick with the iPhone OS myself.

 

[edesignuk]

Like I've said before, I don't get the big deal about Android.

It's a free and open mobile OS with big backing, that's the big deal.

 

[t0mat0]

It's a free and open mobile OS with big backing, that's the big deal.

As Karim said on Twitter:

Google is playing both sides at the same time. Develop for a single platform -- and yet, feel free to add proprietary hardware & functionality and rip out stuff you don't want!
Android supports Java -- and yet, it's not really Java!
Android is open source -- and yet, the SDK is proprietary!
Google is going to make a ton of money on Android -- and yet, they're giving it away for free! Android is aimed at the price-sensitive handset manufacturer
-- yet, we want to see it deployed on cool phones with expensive hardware! etc. etc. etc. Well played, GOOG, well played.

 

[edesignuk]

I don't think anyone is under any illusions that Google will make a small fortune out of it, never the less, I still believe it will be a great platform with a wide range of handsets and developers.

 

[Project]

Honestly i Love my iPhone but some of the stuff shown in the video beats it hands down. Slide to unlock becomes a visual password, AMAZING. I was sold when he did the status bar pull down. If this was out before the iPhone apple would have used this as there mobile OS, no doubt about it.

That's kind of the point though. If the iPhone wasn't released then Android wouldn't look like it does.

Make no mistake, the iPhone has singlehandedly jump started this industry.

 

[ScoobyDoofus]

It looks promising, for sure. Competition encourages innovation, I'm looking forward to seeing what these companies come up with in the future.

I was wowed by the compass/streetview thing until I stopped and thought about when I would ever actually use that feature... It's cool, no question about that, but kinda pointless. If I'm stood on a street corner, I can just look around, I wouldn't be looking at street view on my phone while turning on the spot! And if I was at home, I'd rather be sat there and use a cursor or whatever to move the view than have to get up and turn around to see what is "behind me".

Still cool though. And I suppose it'd be good for satnav...

 

[kdarling]

I don't think anyone is under any illusions that Google will make a small fortune out of it, never the less, I still believe it will be a great platform with a wide rage of handsets and developers.

iPhone SDK downloads = 100,000+
Android SDK downloads = 750,000+

Millions of Java programmers. How many Cocoa devs? (It would help if Apple didn't throttle the iPhone developer acceptances.)

I like the way Google gives away money in its Android contests, no strings attached. Microsoft, RIM and Apple should take a lesson.

Apple's iPhone Fund has only funded two applications so far out of 1700 entries, and approached just one other so far. Is nothing else interesting enough?

We're still in the infancy of mobile apps, looking for the killer ones.

I want all the handhelds to succeed, but it'd be nice to have a common development platform. (Apple should've ported Phone-OSX to multiple current ARM-based phones... same as Google should've.) Still a chance for Opera or Adobe here.

 

[t0mat0]

iPhone SDK downloads = 100,000+
Android SDK downloads = 750,000+
Millions of Java programmers. How many Cocoa devs? (It would help if Apple didn't throttle the iPhone developer acceptances.)

I like the way Google gives away money in its Android contests, no strings attached. Microsoft, RIM and Apple should take a lesson.

Apple's iPhone Fund has only funded two applications so far out of 1700 entries, and approached just one other so far. Is nothing else interesting enough?

We're still in the infancy of mobile apps, looking for the killer ones.

I want all the handhelds to succeed, but it'd be nice to have a common development platform. (Apple should've ported Phone-OSX to multiple current ARM-based phones... same as Google should've.) Still a chance for Opera or Adobe here.

I guess portability of code between platforms is going to be an issue here. The Raging Thunder developers seem to partially solved something coding for multiple platforms: something Google was saying was (implicitly) a problem

At Polarbit, however, we have developed our own middleware solution, Fuse, enabling us to cover all the major high-end mobile platforms. Because we rely on Fuse, we can reach the iPhone, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Brew, WIPI and even the Nintendo DS with just a single source code. This is of course a tremendous advantage when working in a field as wide and fragmented as mobile gaming.

We aren't totally aware of all that's going on VC and funding wise, as NDAs must be numerous. I think Apple reigning in on apps is a blessing in a way - yes, they are the ones deciding as gatekeepers which app gets in, but also they can pick cream of the crop. We don't yet know the true level of control they want long-term on this. iTunes can cope with the variety of music available, so why can't the Apps Store. (I think there is a difference between music and applications though, in terms that most people may have hundreds of videos, thousands of songs, but even more than a few dozen apps and things get messy.

Something akin to Quicksilver for iPhone? Or is leafing through the 8 odd pages quicker?

 

[gloss]

Frankly, I think Android looks great, if not quite as slick as the iPhone interface. Still, if I weren't dead-set on getting an iPhone I'm sure a nice Android device would be my second choice at this point.

 

[heyp]

Honestly i Love my iPhone but some of the stuff shown in the video beats it hands down. Slide to unlock becomes a visual password, AMAZING. I was sold when he did the status bar pull down. If this was out before the iPhone apple would have used this as there mobile OS, no doubt about it.

agree about the status bar... that was a real nice feature

 

[Sasha-1]

I think that Android looked pretty nice. It will most certainly boil down to the overall device experience. What software are available, what hardware are available, what accessories are available. I think Android is a credible #2 to iPhone. I still say the eco system for content on the iPhone makes it the best consumer device. But this Android should not be discounted. That video is pretty impressive. Did they steal concepts? Heck yeah. Perhaps Google could make a real competing OS for something like an iPod where Microsoft, Creative, and all others have failed.

I still don't see how BlackBerry is going to survive this. iPhone and Android look like front-runners to me. BlackBerry looks like a Commodore 64 by comparison.

Alex Alexzander

 

[DreamPod]

iPhone SDK downloads = 100,000+
Android SDK downloads = 750,000+

There's a couple reasons for that. When the Android SDK came out, nobody really knew what Android was - there were no Android phones, Google had only given hints, yet had hyped it up way beyond measure. So most of those 750,000+ downloads were not developers at all, but people wanting to see and play with the Android simulator. Second reason was that contest, develop something Google considers a killer app, and you get a lot of money. Apple's iFund is nothing like that, it's just a normal Venture Capitalist willing to invest in startups. Contests with lots of money involved gets people crawling out of the woodwork, whether they are qualified or not. I bet the majority of people who downloaded Android for that contest realized they were in over their heads and gave up.

The problem I have with Android, is the fact that it isn't a set hardware platform. Cellphone companies can make their hardware any way they want, so if I were to program a game for Android, I'd have to program it like a PC game, able to run at varying resolutions, processor speeds, graphic and sound capabilities...ugh. Android games will end up much like standard cellphone games, designed for the lowest-common-denominator, the weakest phones. The iPhone, on the other hand, is a set hardware standard - I can push the SDK to its limit to make a game that really makes full use of the hardware, and know that my game will run the same on all 4 million iPhones sold already, and all 3G iPhones sold in the future. And that hardware platform is a pretty good one.