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An In-Depth Video Tour of Android 0.9, an (Almost) Great (Almost) OS
Posted by Gizmodo US Edition at 9:00 AM on August 19, 2008
Earlier today Google released the Android 0.9 SDK r1 Beta, boasting of a pile of API updates and a visual refresh that moves it one solid step closer to actually, you know, showing up on a phone. A long changelog and a few screenshots are great, but we've fired up the SDK's emulator for a guided tour of Android's salient features.
0:02: Main menu is contained in a drawer that slides from the bottom of the screen
0:08: Multiple home screens can be flipped with touch gestures, a la the iPhone
0:20: Icons can be dragged from the main menu to build customised home screens. Dragging to the menu drawer trashes the home screen shortcut
0:38: Dialer screen, followed by the call behaviour. Calls can continue in the background, and all functions that don't require data transfer can work concurrently (This is currently a software regulation, as 3g networks should theoretically allow for simultaneous voice and data usage).
0:53: Ongoing calls and other notifications can be accessed by dragging the taskbar down.
1:20: Browser displays Gizmodo. Rendering is quite good, page navigation is a fairly intuitive rehash of current touch-control schemes. It's not terrible good at guessing column widths during double-tap zooming, but seems very usable. Preview magnification feature is useful for smaller screens or text-heavy pages.
2:22: "Tabbed" browsing feature lays out a grid of pages, with previews
2:45: Google Maps app. As you can see, this is among the more polished apps, and will feel familiar to anyone who has used Google Maps on the desktop or mobile devices.
3:30: Google Maps Street View.
4:00: Home screen include widgets (Google Search, a clock and a picture frame are the only ones for now) that can be dragged around the home screen(s).
4:23: The music apps relies on a panel of icons (a recurring theme in Android)
4:30: Message composition is unremarkable, but there is no sign of an on-screen keyboard at the moment. This could be a customisation catered the the first round of Android phones, at least one of which will have a slide-out keyboard.
5:12: The camera naturally doesn't work in the emulator, but there are currently very few options in its menus.
5:50: Wallpaper switching. This is one of the few areas where Android excels aesthetically. Wallpaper scrolls as home screens are switched, but at a slower rate that the icons. This creates a convincing illusion of depth.
6:11: The home screen can also be modified via the system menu, where you can choose to add applications, widgets and shortcuts, as well as change the wallpaper.
0:02: Main menu is contained in a drawer that slides from the bottom of the screenIt's hard to pass judgement on Android in the condition it's in. What's there is impressive, but there are so many glaring omissions, at least from a consumer standpoint. There is a fantastic system for managing ongoing calls and system messages (via the pull-down taskbar) but no apps to take advantage of it. Email and IM would suit such a configuration beautifully, but neither is included in this release. And seriously, where is the calendar? The organiser? A video app? Youtube support?
Sure, these things could be left to the developer community, but Google already has messaging, email, video and calendar services, so it's reasonable to expect that they be included by default in Android. Before a public release, Android should at least posses a feature set comparable to your average candy bar phone, courtesy of Google, so that the eager open-source development community can devote their effort to creating new, innovative apps and modifications for the OS.
Objections aside, the progress is promising. In terms of usability, Android is much easier to navigate and customise than virtually all other mobile solutions. With a few more apps, Android will be a clear choice over Windows Mobile, skinned or not. You can download the SDK and play with the emulator yourself, if you want. Just a word of warning, though — explaining to your family or significant other that you're testing an emulated prerelease of an upcoming mobile OS is about as hard as it sounds. [Google Android, Android on Giz]
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
Alice
Posted August 19, 2008 1:38 PM
It's impossible to get audio in with that video????
marm0lade
Posted 10:12 AM 19/8/08
@newgalactic:
You will be required to have a GMail account to use android. That right there is tons of adsense revenue.
marm0lade
Shadowlayer
Posted 10:10 AM 19/8/08
Looks really cheap to me.
Seriously, is no compiz, that would kick the shit out of the iphone...
Shadowlayer
Ken_Darrow
Posted 9:48 AM 19/8/08
@Anrui: iPhone users don't need copy and paste. They are so smart, memorizing entire paragraphs or multiple UPS tracking numbers is child's play.
Ken_Darrow
jewsrock
Posted 9:45 AM 19/8/08
@newgalactic: im sure hardware manufacturers will pay for this. google is about making things free for the consumer, not a company. remember they still are a for-profit company that makes 17 billion dollars a year.
jewsrock
newgalactic
Posted 9:42 AM 19/8/08
Like everything Google, this will probably be awesome after YEARS of "beta". But what's their revenue source, ads (hope not)? Or will hardware manufacturers pay to have this on their devices? If it has more functionality then iPhone, I consider making the switch. But for all my iPhone bashing, I'm pretty impressed with my 2G model. And for $200, I've yet to see a competitor that beats the 3G version.
newgalactic
DW
Posted 9:40 AM 19/8/08
This had better work great on Macs, that's all I'm sayin'!
Because I like to feel like I'm the most important person in the world and major corporations should cater to my needs :)
(Is there anyone more self-depreciating on this site than me?)
DW
collider
Posted 9:34 AM 19/8/08
I'd put my AT&T sim in it.
@jfj:
sweet. looks like everything that's nice about windows xp.
fixed.
collider
sdonham
Posted 9:33 AM 19/8/08
@jfj:
That's the beauty of open source... don't like the way it looks? Change it (or someone else will for you).
sdonham
aeroworks
Posted 9:31 AM 19/8/08
@jewsrock: I think what he meant by "it's not an iphone" was that steve jobs didn't tell him to get android. ;)
aeroworks
sdonham
Posted 9:31 AM 19/8/08
I like where this headed. Considering the open-source community's never ending thirst for improvement, I can see this excelling at a blistering rate once it gets through the gates.
Wirelessly sync this to my google calendar, address book, picasa and other google apps, and I'm sure buyer.
sdonham
jfj
Posted 9:29 AM 19/8/08
fugly. looks like windows xp.
jfj
tremans
Posted 9:29 AM 19/8/08
Saw a little MMS action in that video. Already beats the iPhone. :P
tremans
jewsrock
Posted 9:28 AM 19/8/08
if this gets a big developer community and gets put on really good hardware, it could easily kick iphones ass. im thinking that if its so customizable sooner or later someone is gonna make an exact iphone interface. so you could get this and use it as an iphone OR as a really awesome android phone. so if "its not an iphone" is your problem, it shouldnt be.
and i think with more updates android could easily beat iphone. i really like the zooming in the browser
jewsrock
unspellable
Posted 9:28 AM 19/8/08
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
unspellable
MDIFILM
Posted 9:26 AM 19/8/08
reminded me of a custom rom for the Tilt...
MDIFILM
Penguin4x4
Posted 9:25 AM 19/8/08
I lol'd @PC+Mac Coexist
Penguin4x4
marm0lade
Posted 9:24 AM 19/8/08
@PC+Mac Coexist:
"One major positive: it's not the iPhone."
Fixed. No crappy DRM, no crappy system for controlling apps (App Store), free apps, REAL open source, ohhh and it has the infamous capacitive touchscreen that all other devices that rival the iphone are missing.
In other words, it allows the kind of development people hoped the ihpone would have, before Apple decided to put profit over usability.
marm0lade
MagnoliaBoy
Posted 9:24 AM 19/8/08
But what if an iPhone gets hacked for Android? iPhroid? Androne? WTF am I even talking about?
MagnoliaBoy
Aristeia
Posted 9:23 AM 19/8/08
That was a great video, and I love the typed minutes.
I would've liked to see the the onscreen keyboard; that's one feature that i'd like to compare w/ the iphone OS keyboard.
It looks neat and all, but I don't really see how it's any kind of killer OS. Well, I suppose time will tell.
Aristeia
xaflatoonx
Posted 9:19 AM 19/8/08
@PC+Mac Coexist:
lol - my friend - that's their biggest pro!!!
xaflatoonx
snakepliskin
Posted 9:18 AM 19/8/08
I kind of hope this thing works out cause i dont have att and really have no reason to switch even though verizon is pretty dildoes. Im kind of hoping for a nice sony phone running a classy looking android set up.
snakepliskin
jaredgibbs
Posted 9:16 AM 19/8/08
I have an iPhone and still I say that this UI ain't bad. A good alternative for those who just aren't part of Apple's demographic.
jaredgibbs
Anrui
Posted 9:16 AM 19/8/08
Yes, but can it copy/paste? :P
Anrui
PC+Mac Coexist
Posted 9:15 AM 19/8/08
One major flaw: it's not the iPhone.
PC+Mac Coexist
readams
Posted 10:36 AM 19/8/08
Google's revenue model for this is the opportunity to monetize mobile search traffic and mobile advertising mostly through the browser, and likely through location-aware services and advertising in the future.
The main thing Google is trying to accomplish here is to ensure that the mobile market becomes open so that Google has access to it. The last thing Google wants is for Microsoft or Apple to create a walled garden to which nobody else can get access, and then capture that revenue for themselves.
Google, I believe, simply sees itself as benefiting from an open mobile environment just as it benefits from an open web today.
readams
PC+Mac Coexist
Posted 10:36 AM 19/8/08
@xaflatoonx
@marm0lade
lol @ you guys. That wasn't a fanboy comment, I'm talking in terms of a selling point. There are a lot of iPhone-rivaling phones out there, and all of them fall very far short. I doubt this case will be any different. The iPhone is still going to come out on top, it's just the sad nature of things.
PC+Mac Coexist
Mike918
Posted 10:33 AM 19/8/08
Wow...very tall video..really
Mike918
Technogen
Posted 10:29 AM 19/8/08
@mhains: ... .... yeah I'm not even going to try to point you around, I'll just leave you believing that one.
This looks great, they need to get us a phone to play with soon, this + "Video demo of active Android Platform" = pwn.
Technogen
almukadi
Posted 10:28 AM 19/8/08
I thine I am going to wait for the ZuneAphone. I heard it is going to be a killer phone that would work out of the box with no bugs and would have backward compatibility with the iPhone, Android , Mobile me and DOS, unfortunately Vista was dropped from the listed due to unknon reasons.
;)
almukadi
mhains
Posted 10:22 AM 19/8/08
Leaving the UI in the hands of the open source community is a recipe for disaster. Linux geeks don't know how to create elegant interfaces. If there's one benefit to the iPhone, it's the consistency of the GUI.
mhains
soulfinger
Posted 10:22 AM 19/8/08
I still don't get it why people want everything to kick the iPhone's 'ass'. Seriously are you all that big of nerd fanboys that you can't recognize something that's pretty damn good when you see it?
soulfinger
soulfinger
Posted 10:20 AM 19/8/08
Hello? Yes, 1998 called it wants its interface design back.
soulfinger
imaginaryplaya'
Posted 11:23 AM 19/8/08
looks good, but the hardware is going to have really be nice.
imaginaryplaya'
lazerpenguin
Posted 11:20 AM 19/8/08
@zamafir:
yeah because the iphone was the first phone to use icons on a home screen? Hell even my old palm has icons on a home screen that you tap to open.
The drawer to open apps, the widgets that you can have along side the home screen icons, the ease of organizing your icons by dragging them to the home screen or putting them in a drawer... how is this a mee too itineration of the iphone gui?
it really bothers me when people see a touch phone these day its now a iphone rip off, like iphone was the first phone to have a touch screen.
lazerpenguin
chizelord
Posted 10:58 AM 19/8/08
looks great but I'll stick with my iPhone
chizelord
zamafir
Posted 10:44 AM 19/8/08
It reminds me of vista. hey... osx has a nice interface, let's go head and flatter apple as much as we can without being sued. Same thing hear. sure it's not apple, but its obviously very much inspired by the iphones interface. i would have expected something more inventive from android than a mee-too iteration of the iphone gui.
zamafir
Joseph
Posted 11:56 AM 19/8/08
@jfj: I'm with you. Google needs to get some UI guys. Apple sells cuz of it's UI, not cuz of actual superior operating system.
Joseph
tartis
Posted 12:27 PM 19/8/08
I think that I am in love with Android! It looks sweet so far.
tartis
.endejas.
Posted 12:51 PM 19/8/08
@mrsalty: Favorites as a star icon has been around.. for nearly as long as I can remember. Just open up IE and look at the top left.
.endejas.
mhains
Posted 12:42 PM 19/8/08
@Charbax2: "Expect unlocked Android phones at below $200 without any subscription contract"
...What kind of quality handset can we expect for $200?
Even a device like the HTC Touch Diamond retails for closer to $600 without a contract and it's running Winmob.
How is the OS going to bring down the cost of the hardware?
mhains
Charbax2
Posted 12:37 PM 19/8/08
Not only are Android phones going to be much better then the iPhone, Android is also going to be much cheaper.
Expect unlocked Android phones at below $200 without any subscription contract necessary, expect VOIP to run on it for free worldwide voice calls, expect IM to be on it for free worldwide text messaging, expect full open video standards support such as DivX, Flash video formats, expect unrestricted and open access to streaming content features.
Also expect Google Android Linux OS to come on $100 Laptops as well.
Charbax2
mrsalty
Posted 12:33 PM 19/8/08
It's pretty sad when even the simplest element from the iphone is copied. Why does the favorites icon have to be a star like that on the iphone. There are 200 Billion icons to chose from and they had to copy it. Why do the elements have to be black and white and shades of gray... why copy why not pink and purple I just don't get it!!!! This is not advancement this is blatant copying and I'm want real change!!!! Amen brother Paul.
mrsalty
JackMatt
Posted 1:21 PM 19/8/08
@Joseph: You want to change the GUI... then go to town. Android.Google.com has the full SDK :)
JackMatt
JackMatt
Posted 1:20 PM 19/8/08
@mhains: Its a heavy roamer over at Tmonews.com that the HTC Kila/Dream will go for $150 for current T-Mobile users for 1 week starting on the 17th of next month. It will be shipped on the 3rd of October (I think the 3rd). Price for the new accounts have been roamed at $200 however it could be more cuse the Kila/Dream seems to be a bit higher end with a QWERT and all.
I got my countdown time set to the 17th and will be selling the Wing on the 3rd. :) Go Android and T-Mobile!!!
JackMatt
Charbax2
Posted 1:19 PM 19/8/08
Open and free Linux OS is going to bring down price of the hardware cause now any company can make one, any carrier can use one, any wireless network technology can be used. You don't have to ask anyone for permission. You don't have to licence any OS under any specific conditions.
Now if the cell phone service carriers are going to let you put one of their sim cards in one such unlocked Android device is another question. But there now is basically nothing stopping Android hardware from simply being unlocked with an empty sim card compartment just waiting for you to find a carrier that provides you with a service on a basic sim card. The SIM card costs a few cents to manufacture, so the carrier wouldn't have any reason to sign you up for any long term contract.
Charbax2
Joseph
Posted 1:37 PM 19/8/08
@Charbax2:
That is a good theory but I don't think that's going to be the reality. I mean we have the same opportunity in the Desktop PC market and OSX comes out at $120 retail and Vista gets up to $320. The problem with Open Source is that they can't just get together and make one awesome project. They have the knowledge, creativity, innovation and intelligence. The challenge is that every time someone has a new idea, they spawn their own OS which is why there are like 50 flavors of Linux. If history has taught us anything, Mobile Linux OS will control less than 5% of the mobile market share. Don't get me wrong, I love Linux, I just don't think that community can work together.
Joseph
JackMatt
Posted 1:31 PM 19/8/08
@Tonicboy: Yah they got to fix that. However I think HTC has come along ways. The HTC Touch Diamond is not fare off and to tell you the truth I kinda like some buttons and not just screen.
JackMatt
Tonicboy
Posted 1:27 PM 19/8/08
looking good, boys. now let's just get it on some hot hardware. *sigh* unfortunately, this is probably where the plans get derailed. few people can make hardware as hot as apple it seems. seriously, are they the DeBeers of industrial design or something, got some kind of lock on that talent pool?
Tonicboy
steininger
Posted 1:25 PM 19/8/08
well, I have a year left on my helio contract, and since I know that wont be getting renewed I look forward to being able to hop on the android bandwagon in a year. Now if I can just find a carrier that matches the service to cost ratio that I'm getting from Helio. Im not at all surprised they went under with how little they charge me.
steininger
SgtToastie
Posted 1:24 PM 19/8/08
The fact that most negative comments are on the interface (which will probably be fully customizable knowing where Android is coming from) makes me laugh at all of your stupidity and lack of vision.
SgtToastie
JackMatt
Posted 1:22 PM 19/8/08
@Joseph: You want to change the GUI... Go right ahead, android.google.com has the full SDK. Change anything your little hart would like. :)
Ohh and Damn comments for not posting.
JackMatt
vgart
Posted 2:05 PM 19/8/08
How can you type? Is there a revolutionary plastic keyboard?
vgart
lazerpenguin
Posted 2:22 PM 19/8/08
@mrsalty: are you using firefox? look in the address box and what do you see for the symbol to favorite (ie bookmark) something? thaaaats right a star. apple was not (and neither was mozilla) the first and only to use a star as the favorite icon.
lazerpenguin
shanzi
Posted 2:19 PM 19/8/08
Tried it...
Not bad to be honest.
shanzi
ghmlco
Posted 3:31 PM 19/8/08
"... expect VOIP to run on it for free worldwide voice calls, expect IM to be on it for free worldwide text messaging..."
Expect Verizon or AT&T or Sprint to let such a thing on their network, do you?
ghmlco
ghmlco
Posted 3:28 PM 19/8/08
"Considering the open-source community's never ending thirst for improvement..."
Let me correct that: Considering the open-source community's never ending thirst for FEATURES...
Unfortunately, a vast pile of features does not a good device make.
Backwards, talking, am I.
ghmlco
Drunken Economist
Posted 3:55 PM 19/8/08
@PC+Mac Coexist: You're right, it's not the iPhone. Apple is in the process of 'blowing it' for two reasons: 1/ Pissing off the real Devs, [who are not Linux Devs] and 2/ those Devs hosting their projects on Google and possibly migrating the projects via Java and package manager [Cydia, read on]..
Apple had their chance to embrace the jailbreakers. You know, the folks who know better? Who screamed at them for having a mini macos platform that ran as root? You should have seen what Apple's solution was in firmware 1.1x. Laughable. A 300 meg private userspace, where they put /swap/ that ran out all the time. Folks with Unix chops moved their /swap and the crashing went away. *sigh*
Their [cr]AppStore with its restrictive APIs versus the jailbreakers' 'toolchain'. Even more laughable. On your 3G iphone Apple only allows one running process and no background ones.. WTF? And it *still* crashes? Does anyone want to jailbreak their iphone, run terminal.app and type 'df'?? Did Apple learn ANYTHING?
@Joseph: Really? Then what do you call Installer.app, some of which is in the AppStore? Or even better, what do you call Cydia.app, the *nix package manager? Which, I hesitate to say, has hooks for python and Java?? Not coming soon, but *already available* at a jailbroken ipod or iphone near you? *Not* from the normal open source community but from the 'jailbreakers'.
Here's what happens: Jailbreaker apps like Installer or Cydia migrate to Android via the *unrestricted* Java APIs. Of course not 100%, but then. The themers go to town, and the Android UI which to me looks kinda gnomish NEXTy gets an Aqua facelift. As Apple cribs from gnome and other desktop pagers, so shall others crib from Apple / BSD. Fact of life.
The next best thing to a hobbled MacOSX on an iPhone is an open up-n-coming, hungry, WELL FUNDED system like Android via Google. Give me a 4-6 megapixel camera and hooks to ImageCapture on my OSX MacBookie and I could care less whether Apple makes the phone.
One more tidbit. A lot of the *really good* apps that made it to the AppStore? When they were wee little jailbroken sprogs? Where was their lily pad??
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? GOOGLE CODE.
Apple tried and continues to fail to put the genie back in the bottle. Maiming the genie. Android's bottle doesn't look that impressive as of yet, but it's OPEN. And well funded.
Thank you very much, I'll be here all week. I know, go away.
Drunken Economist
DW
Posted 4:29 PM 19/8/08
Just today I almost buckled.
I almost buckled and told my best friend that I'm going to order an iPhone.
This Android demo gave me faith to be more patient and wait a couple of months. I need to see what Android does before making a decision. iPhones are fine, but right now, the open source of Android is pulling at me with great force :)
DW
aside
Posted 5:26 PM 19/8/08
Browsing was extremely low. I don't wanna boast here, but MobileSafari takes about half the time to load the Giz. Was that a bad connection to the Interwebs, or the browser?
I'm an iPhone 3G user, but I'm actually glad Android is coming out nicely--nothing groundbreaking to me, but still, Apple does need some serious competition to get its act straight. And nothing prevents me from switching platforms if I see some real advantage 1 or 2 years from now. That's the beauty of buying unlocked, I guess.
I sure hope Google plays it nice as well, though. They're not the "do no evil" company any longer and, for one, search in GMaps for the iPhone sucks *big time* if you're not using English as a language. I sure hope they won't let other platforms down as they develop concentrate on their own OS.
aside
sarwatmj
Posted 5:09 PM 19/8/08
its okay, but nothing mind blowing.. i expected something better from Google.. but its just the start, so u never know..
sarwatmj
plailleur
Posted 6:35 PM 19/8/08
My two cents that Android will be at least as influential as the iPhone. Its openness is clearly what Apple couldn't (and didn't want) to develop. Think about the iPhone strategy and why Steve got to change the iPhone business model. From a business point of view they could have down so much better by flooding the world with an opened iPhone platform with a more suitable business model. To me, the revenues of such devices are yet to be revealed, my guess is that lie in the use of services and not in the hardware.
plailleur
aeroworks
Posted 7:00 PM 19/8/08
@mrsalty: like asking why do cops have mustaches, or why most sport cars are red. not cause there ripping them off.. just there catering to the demographic. If they released a purple gui they would be laughed out of the market. also, themes will make it easy to change whatever you want. not like your stuck with whatever they give you. people need to stop thinking so narrow minded. When i am on my computer i don't limit myself to just what the OS comes with. but rather third party addons and enhancements to fit my style.
But yes, android clearly needs more work done. and i am sure we will see several iterations come and go until they receive a standing ovation from the community.
aeroworks
bacchus2678
Posted 7:43 PM 19/8/08
What the chances of being able to install that on my ipaq phone?
bacchus2678
jimothy
Posted 8:35 PM 19/8/08
like, OMG, if you don't like the interface, you can totally make your own! It's, like, so open sorce and stuff! Companies like Apple have to, you know, send time getting the interface right themselves. Lame! This way, you can make all the icons pink or go for a sweet Goth look! How cool would that be? LOL! A phone that lets geeks program their own OS! OMG! They're, like, totally gonna sell the hundreds, if not thousands, of these little guys! And the name-Android-how cute is that?
jimothy
Paul Dullford
Posted 10:23 PM 19/8/08
@lazerpenguin: Hey, let's go back even further: What about the Newton?
@PC+Mac Coexist: Frankly, I don't see why this falls short of the iPhone OS. With Street View I think Android is doing an excellent job. Google doesn't screen the apps that go into your phone (which likely means you can tether all you want). I think the menu system is much better than what I've seen with the iPhone. Pity this has to be on T-Mobile, but hey, a lot of people use T-Mobile.
Paul Dullford
fquick
Posted 10:37 PM 19/8/08
Not impressed so far, but hey, it's still early on. A skin will definitely modernize it up - the current look really reminds me of the 90's.
fquick
Joseph
Posted 11:04 PM 19/8/08
@Drunken Economist: Nice ADHD rant. A Mobile Linux OS that does not have corporate support will fail. People care more about support than an Installer.app, where *really good* AppStore apps got their start, and GUI guidelines. Remember you and most people on Gizmodo have a higher technical understanding than the average consumer--As long as Google takes responsibility for their OS, it should be good.
The only thing worries me is that Google's support is worse than Apples. I have an Adsense, Adwords, Google Docs, Google Pages, Gmail, and Google Corporate Account; None of my services provide any phone numbers for support. If something is broken with Google, you have to figure it out yourself. Google has no track record in the commercial OS business and their support is non-existent so only time will tell if they end up successful.
Joseph
stryder100
Posted 12:53 AM 20/8/08
I've been a Palm Treo for some years now and got the iPhone 3g a couple of weeks ago. While I'm bothered by it's shortcomings, the interface makes it the first handheld that I've found to be usable for web surfing. I'm rooting for Google but they've got some stiff competition in iPhone's interface. I'm not sure what I saw in the video is going to cut it.
stryder100
Denholm
Posted 1:45 AM 20/8/08
The people saying the interface looks like something from the 90's can't be serious. Go back and look at how things looked back then. It's not even close.
I think the matte and somewhat boring icons combined with the butt effing ugly emulator "phone" design is what makes people say it's ugly. People wants large, glossy icons, like on the iPhone, not poorly designed matte icons. But come on, you can't judge an OS on its icons.
I've been playing around with the latest SDK in the emulator for hours now and it's by far the best mobile OS I've ever tried, save for the iPhone. It's already, at a late beta stage, almost on par with the iPhone. Sure it's not as pretty as the iPhone in all areas, but in other areas it's actually a lot better. Like the fact that you can use a wallpaper of choice instead of that boring as eff black background, or the fact that you can drag icons and other elements around to your heart's content to create the perfect home screen.
I also tested the music player out, which gizmodo sadly didn't in this video, and it is pretty damn good. Playlists, shuffle, ID3 tags, real-time search filter etc, everything worked flawlessly as far as I could tell. It did not show the album cover though, not sure why not.
I also tried to stream music from my web server using the Android browser and it worked nicely too after a few seconds of buffering. Though when I streamed music that way it did not list the artist/song in the music player, it just left me with empty fields.
The flow of the OS was very nice, but then again the emulator is running on a PC with ten, twenty times the computing power of any phone hardware. Remains to be seen how responsive it is "in real life" on a real phone with 500 measly MHz and very little RAM.
Denholm
bookbot
Posted 4:17 PM 19/8/08
I don't understand the idea of building a mobile phone software if you can join forces with Apple and have only one great mobile phone.
I think that Apple and Google have to megre instead of trying to build the same products.
Apple builds great software and Google is the best internet company in the world, merge this 2 companies and you will have a better company to fight Microsoft.
Microsoft Market Cap: 252.82B
Apple Market Cap: 155.37B
Google Market Cap: 156.69B
--------------------------------
312.06B
bookbot
HeartBurnKid, creepy morbid freak
Posted 3:03 AM 20/8/08
@mrsalty: Internet Explorer had a star for the favorites icon long before the iPhone did, but I don't see you accusing Apple of ripping off Microsoft.
HeartBurnKid, creepy morbid freak
DarkHavoc99
Posted 2:43 AM 20/8/08
Im stuck between this and the HTC touch diamond...
DarkHavoc99
knackers
Posted 11:24 AM 19/8/08
Besides Google Earth, Google apps lack polish, usability and features (the best thing about them is the price).
Just watch the in-built camera, Android will snap photos of you picking your nose and upload them .... you can check them out via Street View.
Google Smoogle ....
knackers
TurboFool
Posted 6:18 AM 20/8/08
I want. Smooth, functional, easy to use. If it ends up with the same base functionality as Windows Mobile and a strong developer community, I'll defect. I just need Exchange and Office support and strong e-mail support (and for more than one Gmail account) and I'm nearly 100% there.
TurboFool
NotMe
Posted 10:49 AM 21/8/08
@mrsalty:
iPhone copying? I don't see that at all.
I'm keeping my iPhone, no doubt about it, but it's nice to see something that competes with iPhone without copying it. Copies are just lame. And the lamest of all is Meizu. By the way, where is that piece of shit?
At any rate, I can't wait to see release versions of Android running on real hardware. It looks very promising.
NotMe
Kirkaiya
Posted 9:32 PM 21/8/08
Well, I have an HTC Touch Diamond, and while the TouchFLO shell over WinMo (with rom 1.93, anywaze) is actually pretty nice, the problem with these skins, or any shell, is that they don't cover the entire beast beneath - and every so often, I'm back into Windows Mobile's ugly, finger-unfriendly interface. Plus running one UI on top of another one can't be very cheap cpu-cycles-wise.
There are already people working on loading the Android OS (in it's various betas) onto Touch Diamond hardware - so if in a year, Android has matured to the point where it's faster, smoother, and functionally equivalent of WinMo 6.1, then maybe I'll load it on my Diamond, and extend its life!
Kirkaiya