Tuesday, November 13, 2007 Limpag: Google phone to ship next year? By Max Limpag Celltalk
GPHONE. It wasn't the widely anticipated Gphone, but Google announced last week the coming release of a platform for mobile devices-a platform it is working on with the Open Handset Alliance.
The Google blog said Android, the name of the mobile platform, "will be the foundation for many new phones and will create an entirely new mobile experience for users, with new applications and new capabilities we can't imagine today." The platform will include a mobile operating system, the software that runs the device; user-interface; and a suite of applications.
You can bet your third generation device that among the suite of applications will be those that provide mobile access to Google's formidable line-up of online services-Gmail for e-mail, GTalk for instant messaging, Google Docs for documents management, and YouTube for video sharing.
OPEN SOURCE. Google is working on the project with members of the Open Handset Alliance that include LG Electronics, Motorola, Samsung, Sprint Nextel, NTT DoCoMo, T-Mobile, and Qualcomm. Conspicuously absent as industry giants Nokia and Sony Ericsson. The company also said during the announcement that the first handsets will be available in the second half of next year. What's good about the project is that Android will be developed and released "under one of the most progressive, developer-friendly open-source licenses." The company said this will give "mobile operators and device manufacturers significant freedom and flexibility to design products."
MOBILE LINUX. I don't know how Android will stack up with other mobile Linux projects, but the decision to release the product under an open source license bodes well for the project. Open source development, where the community is involved in the project and people can add to and improve on the code, ultimately produces products superior to that developed by a proprietary company. The initial versions may fare poorly but given time, open source projects can equal and even exceed the quality of proprietary projects.
TRACK RECORD. Google is an Internet giant. It is so dominant in the online world businesses thrive or shrivel just by their performance in the Google search engine.
Will it be able to extend this dominance in mobile devices? Judging by their forays in mobile applications, I think Google has more than just a chance at dominating handheld devices. It's Gmail for mobile application is, to this day, probably the best mobile e-mail solution that works in a wide variety of handheld devices. It works on any Java-enabled phone and provides a very mobile-friendly interface to its Gmail service. But should you go lining up in stores for the first Android device next year? No.
I think you should give it a few more versions. Don't buy the first devices, at least get the second-generation Android devices if you want value for your money. As with any software project, the first versions are bound to be buggy. Let the early adopters sort these bugs out first.
