Android Phone Makes Its Public Debut

BARCELONA — The Mobile World Congress became the coming-out party for Google's Android OS as four mobile processor vendors showed off pre-production devices running versions of Android.
Google's Android is a Linux-based, open operating system for mobile phones that will sport Google applications. It will be free for manufacturers to adopt, though how free and open the actual phones end up being will be up to phone manufacturers and wireless carriers.

The biggest surprise of the demos was how well Android runs on slow devices. TI showed Android on a Motorola Q-like QWERTY handheld with their 200 Mhz OMAP 850 platform, where the user interface felt smooth and fast, even with little Apple-like animated transitions between screens.

Qualcomm showed Android on an MSM7201 chip, an existing US chipset that isn't at the top of their line. Android looked smooth and fast on that device, as well.
One of Marvell's Android demos ran on their XScale Monahans processor, which comes in various configurations up to 1 Ghz.

TI also demoed Android on their latest OMAP 3430 processor, a much faster machine. However, on that gadget, only the Web browser was working properly. Web pages rendered very quickly and looked pretty much like they do on the desktop; it was easy to scroll around the pages with a finger.
None of the Android phones were doing anything that would particularly strain a powerful processor. The TI 3430 can play high-definition 720p video through its video-out port, but those drivers haven't been written yet, TI reps said.
The Android devices at the show came in both touchscreen and non-touchscreen versions, with two different home screen designs. One design had a smooth-scrolling ribbon of application icons along the bottom of the home screen. The other loaded up the home screen with many icons for all of your recent applications and actions.

The devices also came with a range of other standard applications: a calendar, contacts book, music player, Gmail, Google Maps, and video player. The Qualcomm device had a quick-and-dirty whack-a-mole game; the Marvell device had an anagrams game.

The video player was only demoed on the 200 Mhz TI device, where it played video in full screen, but at low resolution. The music player, demoed on several devices, let users sort by artist or album, and create playlists.

The prototype phones were basically sales devices, to entice actual phone manufacturers to choose particular chipsets for their future Android phones.
HTC, Motorola, LG and Samsung all belong to Google's Open Handset Alliance, so they could all potentially make phones with the OS on board. Manufacturers have said Android phones will appear later this year.

[source : pcmag & cnet.com.au]