Posts filed under Google Android

So – the Google Nexus One. Brand new super-phone developed by Google to take on the world…or a simple update to the existing Developer’s phone, meant only for development purposes? The rumours are coming thick and fast, and fun though it is speculating about it, we’re not getting anywhere fast just by supposing!

Fortunately, the Nexus One ROM has already been leaked, and my ROM-hungry brother, @terminal7, has already installed it on his T-Mobile G1, so we don’t need to speculate – we can see what the fuss is all about for ourselves!

Yup, you read that right, folks – Google’s latest state of the art Android 2.1 operating system running on an old T-Mobile G1!

Pah! And EngadgetMobile thought they were clever showing us the Nexus One on a new Motorola Droid ;)

More pics after the jump.

Google is rumoured to be announcing the new G2 Android phone tomorrow at MWC 2009 – except, it won’t be called the G2, it’ll be called the HTC Magic instead.

HTC, if you remember, are the company who make the T-Mobile G1, and the Magic was originally intended to be the T-Mobile G2. However, the Magic will be available on Vodafone, which might imply that T-Mobile has passed over the chance to get it exclusively for themselves perhaps waiting instead for a G3?

In any case, it would explain why the current G1 on T-Mobile has seen a recent price drop.

Seems everyone and his dog is working on a Google Android handset at the moment! The latest news is of a new Android phone being developed by Chinese laptop and PC manufacturer Lenovo.

As you can see from the pic, it certainly looks more like a phone than a Photoshop fake, so Lenovo are clearly working on something.

News just in – a second Android phone has just been announced to take on the T-Mobile G1. The new handset is called the Kogan Agora, which, as you can probably tell, doesn’t come from any of the major manufacturers. Kogan, it seems, are Australian, but they’ve beat most of the other manufacturers to market with an extremely handsome, and extremely well equipped, Android handset.

More details after the jump.

Google Android phones should be with us later this year, and will need some captivating software right from the start if they’re to capture the interest of users who are already used to the technological miracles of Nokia, Samsung et al. and the user interface wizardry of Apple.

Recently, though, there’s been a few rumours that developers have been losing interest in Android, and that there won’t be much software released for it.

Really? Just wait until you see TuneWiki, an MP3 player for Android phones that’s like no other, then decide for yourself if developers are giving up on the platform before it’s even launched.

Google Android has three main features for develops:

Integrate – lets you use existing Google code, such as Maps, and share data, for example between the browser and Google Maps.

Extend – lets you build on existing Google apps, such as Google Maps, and enhance their functionality. The example shown lets you use Google Maps to locate taxi cabs near you. The app uses the built-in Google Maps app and extends it, adding its own functionality on top of Maps to create a brand new app.

Replace – you can easily replace components. For example, if you don’t like the existing contact manager, you can replace it with a different one from a third party. Not just add a new contacts manager, but completely replace the default one that Google provides.

This makes developing apps much easier, and should let the end user customize their phone to the n-th degree, and get access to a rich ecosystem of new apps that will constantly be developed.

I’m live here at Google I/O at the first Google Android session. So far we’re going fairly tecccie into the software guts of Android, which I appreciate some of you may not be that interested in, but we’ve been promised the latest news on Android at the end of the session – watch for a separate post on that in about 40 minutes’ time or so.

In the meantime, for those of you interested in Android under the hood, there’s loads more info after the jump.

Google have been showing off more of the Google Android mobile platform at the Google I/O conference at San Francisco, which just happens to be where I am now! A working model of an Android handset has just been shown, and it look fantastic. Of course it comes with a touchscreen – what mobile phone doesn’t these days. But the ease of use of the touchscreen rivals iPhone in terms of its ease of use and genuine capability.

Google have attempted to replicate the desktop on the mobile phone. An Android phone lets you create shortcuts to your apps just like you can on the desktop. You can move your icons around on the desktop with your finger, and switch between different running applications just by touching your finger on the screen and swiping it left and right. There’s a status bar at the top of the screen that provides common functions to your phone. Simply place your finger on this bar and drag it down, and a new screen slides down showing all the main functions of your phone.

Android phones use the WebKit browser, but not just for viewing web pages. You can use what Google calls Views to create new apps using the functionality of WebKit. So you get the browser view, for example, and the Maps view, which obviously lets you work with Google Maps.

And it’s the maps that brought the biggest round of applause at today’s opening keynote. Not only was an Android handset shown with standard Google maps on it, in both map and satellite view (both of which rendered very quickly); Google also demonstrated StreetView on an Adroid handset. StreetView, for those who don’t know, is Google’s technology that lets you see photos of a city or town. Not just any photos – they’ve taken literally millions of photos of inidividual locations, letting you scroll forward and move left and right 1 metre at a timne, effectively seeing what the place looks like through a series of photos.

What Andoid adds to the mix is GPS and a compass. Yes, just like Nokia’s forthcoming 6220 Navigator phone, Google’s Android handsets will come with compasses. One was demonstrated with a compass built-in. Google StreetView was called up, with a photo of the street being displayed. As the phone was turned left and right, so the photo turned left and right in real time. This brought a huge round of applause, and looked seriously cool. You can literally move around a city thousands of miles away in real time just by moving around with your Android phone in your hand.

Imagine how useful this could be. Like the look of a hotel in a brochure? Great, but as we all know, brochures are never exactly accurate! What’s next door, for example, or round the corner? With StreetView and an Android phone, simply locate the hotel and get a picture of it. Turn round with your phone in hand, and see a 360 degree sweep of what’s around it. Move forwards and backwards, and see what buildings (or building sites!) are to the left and right of it. How close is it to the beach? Have a walk and find out!

Android looks glorious. It works as well as the iPhone, it’s more functional than the iPhone, it’s entirely open source, and it’s going to be a hugely disruptive technology. I could be being blinded by the Google hype, but I really do think I’ve just seen the future!

I’m now attending the dedicated Google Android track, and will have more updates for you shortly. Oh, an dloads of Android pictures too!

Yesterday we brought you pictures of the Google Android phone on show at MWC 2008. Today, we thought we’d go one better, and bring you a video of the phone in all its glory.

Obviously, this is just a prototype, so pay no attention of the hardware it’s encased in. The phone itself is an old cannibalised smartphone, and really isn’t the focus of the excitement at the moment. It’s all about the software – what Android will offer, how it will look, and more importantly, how different it will be from existing mobile phone software platforms.

Well that didn’t take long – no sooner had I posted about Google Android prototypes being on display at MWC 2008, than up pops a picture of one!

You can’t really see much – in fact, it looks just like an old Sony Ericsson P900 smartphone externally (which it probably is – this is a prototype, remember). However, it’s the software we’re really interested in, and there’s just not enough detail in this pic to give us any idea of what we can expect from Google Android phones.

More Google Android pics coming up, though, so stay tuned.

[Source: TechCrunch]