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EEtimes Speculates on The Initial gPhone
jetpack writes "EETimes goes Inside the gPhone: What to expect from Google's Android alliance. Based on the membership of the Open Handset Alliance, EETimes makes an educated guess as to what the first offering from Google and its new buddies might be."
The Blackberry also runs its own JVM OS, not Windows Mobile.
I have several Nokia phones. The hardware is wonderful: lots of features, great cameras, etc. Windows Mobile devices, too, have great hardware. The trouble is the software: Symbian sucks, both as a user interface, and as a development platform. It's slow, it's buggy, it's counterintuitive, the desktop software is a PITA, it has bad error messages, ... And Nokia knows it, which is why they bought Troll Tech.
So, what does the gPhone do? It takes the great Windows Mobile hardware that companies like HTC develop and makes it available with better software.
And the software is here: you can download it and run it. I would expect the first actual Google Phones to come out in a few months at the most (actually, I think you can already get small quantities if you really want to).
Isn't HTC the world's largest smartphone maker? At a very high level, there are not many REVOLUTIONARY features in the android platform. The growing interest that this platform is getting is because of:
.. because of their unawareness. A Google platform called Android has a big brand-name. People trust Google .. in fact, more so than Microsoft. So, they won't worry about buying a Google Phone.
.. not desktop based. What does that mean to the smartphones? That means that we will no longer have the unnecessary tie-ups of the smartphones to the desktop. Those of you who have used smartphones enough know what I am talking about.
1. Software on the mobile devices / smartphones is usually terrible. Use any Symbian / Windows Mobile device for a few weeks and you will see how slow, counterintuitive, buggy and unintelligent the platform / user-interface is.
2. Android platform has the potential to become THE Linux platform for smartphones. Although Linux didn't get as successful on the desktop as I was hoping, it did get tremendous support from the development community. Looking at the limited market-share that Linux has on the desktop, it is heart-warming to see how many developers are working to provide all kinds of amazing applications to the Linux user. You do not have that kind of community in the smartphone market yet (Although there are some people developing Symbian and WinMo applications). If Android turns out to be a genuine platform, then we can be rest assured that a huge community will develop applications for it. Having Java as the language of choice helps as well.
3. One problem that Linux has on the desktop is that there are no big brand-names associated to it. Every Tom, Dick and Harry knows about Microsoft. And at least Tom and Dick know about Apple too. But none of them would be comfortable using Ubuntu or Fedora
4. The openness of the Android platform makes it a real possibility that the smartphones of the future will NO LONGER be crippled by the Telecom Service Providers. Even if they do, it will hopefully be easy enough to install a fresh Android platform on the phone. This is tremendous in itself.
5. Google is an internet based company
6. Never before have so many manufacturers and telecom service providers been brought together. And thanks to the potential of Android and the companies supporting it, and thanks to the iPhone, there's a good chance that the smartphone will finally become a commodity.