MIT is known for being at the forefront of computing and communications, so perhaps its not too surprising to hear that a class entitled “Building Mobile Applications with Android” a) exists and b) has come up with a load of working Android apps before the first android phone hits the shelves.
The apps on show lean heavily towards the social networking end of things, with quite a lot of geolocation going on too. Although these are undeniably cool features, I do sometimes think it would be nice if every once in a while someone would just write a version of ‘Snake’ or something.
Anyway, here is a quick sample of what the latest generation of IT geniuses came up with.
Loco is a mobile social network that links to your phone contacts and lets you view their locations using google maps.
Flare is an employee tracking system for small businesses (e.g. pizza deliveries).
KEI is an intriguing BlueTooth ‘key’ app that can be used with a special receiver to (for example) unlock your car. Quite whether I would want to trust my car to the 128-bit security the app uses is another question.
GeoLife is a nice mashup of a ToDo list with Google Maps - effectively assigning ‘to dos’ to physical locations and reminding you to do them when you reach those locations.
It’s great to see that there are already some bright developers working on Android apps - and the thing hasn’t even come out yet. Imagine the kind of stuff we will start to see once people use an Android phone and find that there are some itches that need to be scratched..
It looks like Android might be the OS to opt for if you are big on comics. A French IT company called Aquafuds is busy working on a new project called AVE!Comics that looks really quite special.
Basically it is a comic reader for Android handsets, but beyond that it will be linked to one of the biggest galleries of comics in the world which you will be able to browse and select from a swishy looking virtual bookshelf. There will also be an integrated Google Talk function meaning you will be able to meet with other comic/manga hounds and discuss your favourites with.
After hearing plenty about what Android is capable of from a technical standpoint, it’s great to finally see some genuinely unique entertainment applications filter through, especially ones that don’t already have a huge presence on other platforms. Here’s hoping AVEComics! gains enough interest to facilitate a broad and regularly updated library of comics to choose from when it launches. For a quick teaser of what to expect hit this link.
T-Mobile have announced that later this year they will start shipping their first handsets running Google’s open Android operating system.
Speaking at the Wireless Innovati0n 2008, T-Mobile USA VP Joe Sims said that they would be releasing a series of Android devices this yeat, but didn’t have any details about who would be manufacturing the handset.
The smart money is on the HTC Dream (pictured, in a probably fake concept version), widely rumoured to be the first retail Android device.
Motorola has announced its investment in VirtualLogix - a company that specialises in virtualising mobile operating systems.
Virtualisation allows entire operating systems to run on virtual machines. This can allow you to run multiple operating systems at once, but can also be used to allow several different operating systems to run on the same hardware, without having to rewrite them.
With the coming of Android, the mobile OS wars look set to begin in earnest, so this could be a really smart move for Motorola.
By going down the virtualisation route, Motorola can keep its options open, potentially licensing several operating systems or even developing their own. What could emerge is something like what we have with PCs - you can buy a commodity bit of hardware, and have the choice of running Windows, Linux or one of the minority platforms like BSD or SymphonyOS.
Developers are getting their teeth into Google’s new Android mobile platform, and the results promise to be a cut above most of the mobile applications we’ve seen before. Take Enkin as an example: it’s a GPS navigation application that blends live video, 3D graphics and sundry Web 2.0 services.
It’s been developed by Rafael Spring and Max Braun, two German students entering the Google Android Developer Challenge. The app has three modes: a topdown 2D map viewer, a Google Earth style 3D landscape, and a live video mode. Meanwhile, much of the UI for the application is based around rolling and tilting your mobile phone. Accelerometer-tastic!
So, it’s a work in progress for now, with no commercial launch date in mind. But judging by the demonstration video on the Enkin site, it deserves to be picked up by someone for a big commercial push once Android handsets are available.
(via Wireless Watch Japan)
Opera has announced an experimental port of its Opera Mini mobile browser to Google’s Android platform.
The Android version runs in an emulated Java ME session and still has a few small issues, although that’s perhaps understandable when you consider there is no actual Android hardware available to test it on.
This could be a great move for Opera. Symbian, the iPhone and Windows Mobile each have well established browsers with big user bases. While it would see natural to expect the open source Firefox browser to take pole position on Android, the mobile Firefox is dragging its feet a bit and the developers seem to be focusing on the Windows Mobile platform for their initial release.
Opera mini is a very capable Java browser - certainly its better than the default Symbian and WinMo efforts - the problem Opera have always had is in persuading users to leave their comfort zone and try somethng unfamiliar.
With Android offering virgin territory, could this be Opera’s big chance?
Do you remember a while back, we came across a video on the BBC where Google showed off a ‘reference design’ handset running Android? Course you do. Well, the plot is officially thickening as phonemag is reporting that HTC has just announced May 6th as the date for a special event that will be held in London with the tagline “Witness the next wave of HTC Innovation”.
Why is this relevant to Android? Only because HTC has already committed to getting an Android phone into retailers by mid 2008. Here’s where things get really interesting; HTC has already announced a handset called the HTC Dream which is widely rumored to have all sorts of iPhone baiting features such as a full touchscreen interface and onscreen keyboard. The prototype phone demoed for the BBC had just such a design and considering the time frame, it’s not such a dramatic leap of imagination to consider the possibility that what was demoed to the BBC was in fact an early version of the HTC Dream.
Are we right on the money with this, or are we just dreaming (sorry couldn’t resist). Either way, we will be covering the event on May 6th so stay tuned for more info.
Obviously feeling a little overlooked in the aftermath of Apple’s high profile SDK release, Rich Miner, group manager for mobile platforms at Google, has been doing his best to remind everyone about a little know mobile OS called Android.
Following a presentation on Thursday at the Emerging Communications Conference at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley, Miner stated that he expects Android to be more successful than the iPhone.
Once you have devices out there from Motorola, HTC, Samsung, and so on, there’s a much larger potential market on Android than for the iPhone
Miner went on to point out the significant restrictions of the iPhone SDK that will potentially limit the scope for iPhone applications.
There are things I saw people doing with the first version of the Android SDK that it seems like you can’t do with the iPhone at least at the moment
This comes on the back of Apple’s boasts of having supplied 100,000 downloads of its SDK in just four days. Google’s Android SDK has been downloaded 750,000 times which is certainly not to be sniffed at either. Either way, with Windows Mobile and Symbian also thrown into the mix, 2008-09 might set the stage for an OS showdown that makes Apple’s battle with Microsoft back in the day look like a playground scuffle.
(Via Yahoo! News)
So far we have only seen a key driven interface for Google’s Android OS but yesterday, a video that appeared on the BBC website seemed to confirm that there is already a touchscreen version of the OS up and running.
The sleek looking unit pulling this trick is referred to in the video only as a ‘reference design that one of our partners built for us’ by Google’s director of mobile platforms, Andy Rubin. Could this be the first ever video of a true Gphone?
Continue reading ‘Android touchscreen ‘reference design’ demoed on BBC’
Ok time for the gPhone rumour du jour. According to yet another tipster, Samsung is going to build two Android based devices both of which will bear the Google brand as opposed to its own.
Apparently there will be a higher end model released first this autumn followed by a lower spec device which it is claimed will cost less than $100. The source also claims that the device won’t look dissimilar to the Blackberry Pearl but will have a flip out screen.
Sounds like a bit of a design contradiction to us and considering the frequency of similar claims that have been made over the last year, it is hard to take these supposedly leaked facts seriously. What you can bet on is that Google will look to an experienced third party to craft a branded handset at some stage, whether or not that third party will be Samsung remains to be seen.
(Via engadget mobile)
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