Hello Android

Yesterday, I was raving about the iPhone. Yes it's beautiful and shiny, but it is totally locked-down - to the O2 network in the UK and AT&T in the US. What's more, despite running a complete version of UNIX under the hood, no tampering is allowed. No joyous writing of your own apps for it and certainly no Skyping thank you very much.

Now for something completely different:



Google recently launched the Android Mobile Phone Platform, which they developed in conjunction with some big players in the Open Handset Alliance (LG, Motorola, Samsung, T-Mobile, Telefónica, DoCoMo, China Mobile, etc.)

This is a completely open framework allowing people to develop their own mobile phone software. It uses a Linux kernel with application development in Java.

Now, remember what happened when Google launched their Maps API? Suddenly we had hundreds of crazy mash-ups and every second web-site had a Google Map embedded into it. But some really great uses of geographical information came out of that. Android means something similar (but bigger!) for phones. We are going to see a load of really innovative applications built by thousands of developers around the world.

Here are some things that excited me:

1. Everything is replaceable. You can use whatever application you want for each thing you might want to do (each "intent"): to make a call, to pick a photo, to look up a contact, etc. We just plug in whatever app we want to handle it. Maybe a Skype app handles our calls, a Flickr app for our photos and a Facebook app for our contacts!
   
   
2. Your location is available to any application you choose using GPS, cell tower location or wi-fi network geography information. So an app could notify you when you are near a shop with a sale on, or when you are within 100m of one of your buddies.
   
   
3. Google Maps is a standard UI component that can be embedded into any application.
   
   
4. Data messages can be sent directly by applications from one device to another. Apps that use interaction between your phone and your friends phones are suddenly simple to make.

Here's another video about the possibilities: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiD4fGjjXcc&NR=1

I can't wait to see some cool things come out of this!