The Google Phone is here!
3 February 2009
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OK, that was a little bit of sensationalist headlining to grab the uninitiated. Sorry.
If you’re not familiar with Google’s Android, it’s probably worth a quick recap. Firstly Android is NOT a phone. Secondly, Google hasn’t built a phone.
Android is a software platform and an operating system (O/S). On the PC we are all familiar with the Microsoft and Apple operating systems. In recent years we have seen the emergence of ‘open source’ operating systems like Linux as well.
To date there have been a variety of operating systems for mobile handsets, usually proprietary to a particular handset manufacturer. eg. Symbian is Nokia’s O/S, Palm has their own O/S and of course Microsoft handsets use Windows for Mobile.
Android is a (mostly) open source Operating System, which means that any handset manufacturer can theoretically build a phone that uses the Android operating system. Google therefore doesn’t need to build handsets – they just need to convince handset manufacturers to use their O/S.
Just like the iPhone (which uses its own iPhone O/S), Android enables touchscreen technology and (in completely non-technical terms!!) is quite similar to the iPhone O/S. For this reason, Android is being touted as the competition to the iPhone, even though you will see it rolled out on a whole lot of different handsets.
Android was launched in late 2007 but it wasn’t until October 08 that the world’s first ‘Google phone’ was launched. The handset manufacturer was HTC and the HTC Dream was marketed as the ‘G1′.
There’s been a fair bit of speculation recently about which handset manufacturer will be the first to launch an Android phone in Australia and whether they will do an exclusive deal with one of the Australian Telcos.
This week HTC and Optus announced they will launch the HTC Dream in Australia on February 16th via the Optus network. Check out these recent stories on ZDNet and The Australian IT for more information about the handset, the plans and all the fun and speculation!
Late addition – CNET has done an analysis of the cost of plans on Optus for the iPhone 3G vs the HTC Dream.
meh!
1. unexciting hardware
2. It’s not a brilliant mobile phone OS… yet
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