Android – The Gphone At Mobile World Congress

Awhile back I published a piece on the so-called Google phone. You’ll find a link to it over in the Readers’ Choice widget in the sidebar (This, That and the Other Thing). In that post, I mentioned the Android operating system, developed by Google, then pretty much given away to any and every developer in the world. That was November. This month at the Mobile World Congress, Android was the big attraction.

Below you’ll find a couple of videos showing the current state of Android development. While most companies are focusing on designing new hardware to run the new operating system, a Chinese company called e28 has had some success using it on an existing, production model phone. You can see Android at work on a normal handset in the 1st video, which lasts just over 4 minutes.

The second video runs a quite bit shorter, and is more apt to be what we see for sale sometime before Christmas. Don’t worry about the size of the circuit cards, they’ll be shrunk to fit neatly inside a normal, pocket-sized phone once all the testing is finished. The 1st phones we see in the US will probably resemble the iPhone a bit, with a full face touch-screen and more features and web applications than you’d expect.

While I was researching this update, planning to write a great article on it, I came across a rather complete and well-written piece over on last100.com. It was so good, I decided to just link to it, instead of rewriting what was already so well-done. I highly recommend clicking that link.

And now, the Android videos from the Mobile World Congress:

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For more photos and info on Android, check out these links:
engadget
Wired

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I am Jon, and I still want my phone to fix me a sandwich, please.