Google Phone: It's "Android," a Mobile OS, Not Hardware
Video: Android team members talk about the impetus behind the platform.
Google has announced its plans for the "GPhone," which isn't a phone at all, but instead a mobile open-source Linux-based operating system to be available on a variety of handsets, dubbed "Android." The "Open Handset Alliance," or OHA, a group of mobile hardware and software manufacturers who are participating in the Android project, includes HTC, Motorola, T-Mobile, and Qualcomm.
From the Android description page:
Android does not differentiate between the phone's core applications and third-party applications. They can all be built to have equal access to a phone's capabilities providing users with a broad spectrum of applications and services. With devices built on the Android Platform, users will be able to fully tailor the phone to their interests. They can swap out the phone's homescreen, the style of the dialer, or any of the applications. They can even instruct their phones to use their favorite photo viewing application to handle the viewing of all photos.Android's closest analogs are things like Red Hat Linux or—perhaps more accurately—Apple's OS X: a real, UNIX-based operating system with primary design being shepherded by a company with software development prowess.
Software development kits should be out within a week; the first devices running the OS are expected in 2008.
I was going to assemble a list of links to other coverage, but there's really no way you're going to avoid cud being chewed over this on the internet today.
Project Page [OpenHandsetAlliance.com]
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i really hope nokia join this. it would be nice to have a choice of firmware on my n95 rather than the sluggish symbian on it at the moment
The announcement is a whole lot of nothing, but with just a bunch of CEO nodding their heads and praising a non-existent product. What is so revolutionary about it, except it has a giant pretentious banner saying "OPEN" all over it, and we are still being locked in the phone plans of the big telecom companies? Where is the Wi-Fi phone we had been waiting for?
When will Google make their search engine open source? Or how about Gmail? Adsense? Google will never release source codes to others to let them build a competitor of itself. Google needs to stop being pretentious when what it is doing is just marketing themselves as 'not evil' and harvesting the efforts of the open source community.
~ PK
Seems the video's off-line... sadness abounds.
Sadness abounds,.. the video is off-line.
"Apple's OS X: a real, UNIX-based operating system" ... that catches in the craw a bit, if you know the real history of UNIX.
(and the slow slog MACH developers had to prove their system to the UNIX speedsters.)
This is the same approach as Open Moko, innit?
Yea the "Apple's OS X: a real, UNIX-based operating system" thing is just another example of Apple co opting yet another meme for its own market plan. With the throng of fanboys who make them the new MS its no wonder the sheeple choral is up in volume of late.
Now as to the open handset stuff...yea cool..Show me
When i have one in my hands and when it also uses Open Social stuff I will be happy.
Do not get e wrong, happy happy and the double joys for the path they are taking, lets just hope they are actually taking it though and not it being just another long walk up Rock Candy Marketing Mountain...Charlie Charlie we are going to get an open phone Charlie...some with us Charlie...
Lets face it , this is the age where people still believe in WiMax:)-
-tom("ring ring, its god on the phone for you, he wants to add you as a friend")higgins
I understand the differences between UNIX and Mach (and UNIX and unix!) but I think for all intents and purposes these days "UNIX-based" is close enough for the average user, of which I count myself one. It works better than "FreeBSD userland-based." But OS X is close enough to other unices for government work.
I for one welcome our new Android masters.
Okay, Google, good idea for one step in the right direction. In addition, I hope that the low-level phone-network drivers are open. Treos have an infamous problem because their phone driver periodically freezes all applicatons for 30 seconds.
Also, please start some momentum for giving me control over how received calls are handled within my, er, phone host, so I can choose my own voice mail, call screening, call recording, call logging, etc. software since that, and the integration (hah!) between that and the phone's software, are other areas where progress is stuck.
Monopoly 2.0: any problem you can't route around.
You can get to the video through this link.