First Android Build Shown to Mobile Phone Developers

This past week Google’s developer’s conference was one of the first demos of the Android mobile phone operating system.  Announced last year by the Open Handset Alliance, a group of mobile phone manufacturers and software houses who want to have one unilateral platform for all mobile phones to run on Android looks to be one of the most interesting revolutions in the Mobile phones market.

Being developed by Google the phones are highly likely to blend well with other Google-ware like the favourite Maps service and Google Mail service.  The stand out feature is that the operating system is being designed to run on a wide range of mobile phones regardless of their feature set.  In a similar way to how computer operating systems are made to work on a wide range of personal with varying specifications Android will take advantage of specific phone features such as built in GPS and touch screen interfaces.

This past week had the operating system running on a touch screen unnamed handset and it was sporting a number of new features since it was last shown off early in the year.  One exciting feature was how the handset was unlocked; the individual had to draw a specific shape on the touch screen to unlock the keypad.  Another feature took advantage of the GPS function by having an on screen compass which had been tried on other handsets such as the GPS enabled S60 phones offered by Nokia but attendees stated the example shown by Google seemed to work much more fluidly than other attempts.

The decision to show off the software at their developers conference was obviously to entice the collective minds into coming up with some ideas for doable applications for their operating system, with it being open-source software, a bourgeois favourite with the programming masses, it looks promising that any mobile phones sporting Android’s operating system would have a lot to offer the stale mobile phones market.

Obviously a lot of comparisons were made between the software and Apple’s stand out mobile phone the iPhone, the interface seemed to bear some of the Apple hallmarks such as saving Youtube links as icons on the main screen and a touch based interface.

The Android operating system is currently nearing completion with handset manufacturers Motorola, HTC and Samsung all volunteering to use Android on their forth-coming mobile phones in the next year.

There’s been a ton of attention recently to the fact that Google Voice was illegal from the iPhone app store. Here, Ron Richard reviews the free app for T-Mobile G1 users running Android