Android - The Next Generation Phone Platform

I think it's a great great idea that the idea of Android is soon to be available for the mass market. What's great about it is that , mobile phones won't need to be in a 'locked' platform with only limited applications to play around with.

I'm still not entirely sure about what's going on with Android. But from what i know so far , it's definitely an open source project..

"Android was built from the ground-up to enable developers to create compelling mobile applications that take full advantage of all a handset has to offer. It is built to be truly open. For example, an application could call upon any of the phone's core functionality such as making calls, sending text messages, or using the camera, allowing developers to create richer and more cohesive experiences for users. Android is built on the open Linux Kernel. Furthermore, it utilizes a custom virtual machine that has been designed to optimize memory and hardware resources in a mobile environment. Android will be open source; it can be liberally extended to incorporate new cutting edge technologies as they emerge. The platform will continue to evolve as the developer community works together to build innovative mobile applications."

This whole project involves about 300 companies.. namely , Google , Nuance (speech recognition software) , Motorola , HTC , SONiVox , Samsung , just to name a few.. the list is available here..



I think this project will definitely rock. It's like how iPhone came out with their 2.0 SDK , it provides programmers a platform to express their creativity ..it's really a case of technology expression + usability + the uber cool factor ...

I'm not sure if there's other open source platform out there or not.. but this Google's Alliance is definitely taking Apple's iPhone's platform head on... it'll be interesting in the next few months...I'll look around for samples of what it'll look like and post it up later...