Just like the good folks promised, the early look software development kit for
Google's soon-to-be huge
phone OS has hit the streets... er, internet. From what we can tell, the OS is as comfortable on larger, VGA devices as it is on more traditional smartphone layouts. Oh yeah... and it plays Quake. Here's what we know the software will support out of the box:
- Touchscreen
- 3G
- Webkit-based browser
- Optimized Java runtime layer (known as Dalvik Virtual Machine)
- Threaded text messaging
- MPEG-4, h.264, MP3, and AAC file formats
- Accelerated 3D graphics
Below you can see an alternate fullscreen version of the phone (a hardware reference model, not a device you can expect to buy anytime soon) up and running its browser app. If you really want to get serious, pedal your steam-engine over to the
Open Handset Alliance site where you can download the SDK for a variety of platforms. You might want to get cracking on that code, too, as Google has created the
Android Developer Challege, a contest meant to spur production on the devices, with a sweet $10 million pot that will be divided amongst winners. If you're not ready to jump into that game just yet, check out the gallery and view some videos after the break -- you'll see and hear more info about Android than you can shake a stick at.
posted Nov 12th 2007 11:24AM
ahhhhhhhhhhh exciting!
for those who are board:
try listing to all the vids at once
it sounds very funny
Haha, I was just thinking that ... if one video is ok, then 5 must be sweet.
--
Max ... Out!
http://www.cmyos.com - free online operating system
Join the new Google wireless and phone group on facebook
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=9384910015
Invite your friends
The scope is to link people to really sustain the Google bidding. After 1000 the first real idea will be posted.
After 10.000 the second idea and further instruction.
Go COOLinked
SDK? For a phone? Weird. Don't mention this in Cupertino.
Err looks just like Windows Mobile...
Meh..
Seriously WTF? lol
Everything we have seen so far is already availble on Windows Mobile phones since WinMo5.
Microsoft is probably laughing right about now.
Exactly! At the release of the _BETA_ SDK, we are seeing what has taken Microsoft years to support. Imagine where they can go from this, with all these features (and many, many more I am sure that are built-in) available. And the ability of developers to create the integrate compatibility extremely close to the core elements of the OS.
http://www.androidboards.com
I can't imagine Microsoft are laughing - they are probably cranky about the hype given that so far there is nothing really new about the whole thing, except the fact that its free. (I'm not saying that it wont become a wonderful platform which free's us from something-or-other).
Hah, nice Radiohead reference!
Ah, but will it play Quake?
Yes, yes it will :]
Will it play doom?
Will it BLEND?
will you shut up already?
Will it play Counterstrike?
HA!!
couldn't resist
I, for one, welcome our Google-sponsored android overlo...
:is run over by a truck:
will it play BrickBreaker?
"It was funny the first time so it's funny now....right? Part:MCCCXXXVII
Holy jesus.
This could be a HUGE impact on apple sales.
I'm an iPhone user and Im looking forward to this. ATT was in right?
Looks fine but nothing like the next generation leap of the iPhone's OS- especially in terms of software/hardware integration. Windows Mobile just got buried as the go to OS but I suspect nobody in Cupertino is too concerned over this one...
If this OS can copy and paste, then that alone makes it better than the iPhone's os :P.
"In the future people will not copy and paste, they will retype everything on a small software keyboard."
1.1.3?
nah . . . 1.2!
Last I checked, the iPhone didn't play Quake.
10 Million dollars!
I don't think as many people will be developing for the iPhone...
I thought Open Source was all about "free"?
Then you don't understand Open Source. Open/Open Source does not necessarily mean free. The general consumer will inevitably pay for support or services. Think of Open source as you would a website. Some of them are free. Others have a team of people working and putting their work out for all to see and learn from including hobbyists that want to further technology rather than horde IP (*cough*MS*cough*). Some even charge for their website or a service that uses web technology. Open Source is kind of like that.
These comments are sucking today...
If the source is freely available then why would you pay for it?
Why do people pay for Fileplanet? It's a website, the source is downloaded to your PC every time you open the page. They provide a service, and customers pay for that service that uses open source HTML.
I can't hear what he is saying because I'm mesmerized by his huge head of hair.
As for Android, hopefully having not one but two competing platforms (Android, iPhone) will finally make MS "fix" Windows Mobile and make it customer-centric, not Windows-centric (which sounds like apples and oranges, but really isn't!).
Sorry - I don't consider Palm a viable fourth option given that it hasn't changed in like 8 years :(
One thing that is unclear to me... since this is an open platform will people be able to build this for existing handsets? Will I one day be able to put android on my t-mobile dash?
I would love to put this on my ATT 8125 someday, so I'm right with you
Agreed... My old Qtek 9090 could use some Google-Lovin'
Not a single original idea.
I can't quite tell if I'm impressed with what I've seen of Android yet..
In appearance, it seems to be a cross between Windows Mobile, a generic Cell phone OS and (primarily) Mac OSX for the iPhone.
This isn't a bad thing but I was expecting a little bit more out of the platform. Some of the features that I liked after seeing that video were the Open GL capabilities (demonstrated by the globe) as well as (some) of the interface.
I think I remember seeing an Opera icon on the bottom of the screen but I may be wrong - in any case, I was hoping that this OS would deliver better browsing capabilities than it's competition - something that still appears lacking even in this preview. I'm not sure whether he was really using 3G but did you notice how slow the pictures on that Berkeley page loaded up?. Jeez. I've had GPRS work faster.
I'd like Google to leak out a few more videos of what this platform has to offer - given the wealth of free services that they offer online, I was hoping that they would have a few "mobile" versions of these available that wouldn't require you to use the browser to access them. They seem to have integrated Google Maps in quite well which is good.
From a graphical perspective - I've seen 5 year old PDA's deliver Quake and Tomb Raider rendering at just as impressive speed and quality so Android is going to need to step up the game a little bit - show me something I haven't already seen!.
The one thing that excited me after seeing that video is something I think I heard. Did he say you could develop on it using Delphi?. I haven't known many mobile operating systems to ever offer this but even if it's a small thing, it certainly is interesting.
This isn't all about user interface. User interface can be absurdly unusual (sorry, "intuitive") but that is nothing without integration. Having applications that know how to talk to each-other clobbers the importance of the GUI toolkit.
How to do this? Content types done right, integrated search, standard interfaces for every facet of interaction, consistent and integrated program registration, and good inter-process communication.
All of those in one box, even with the most primitive of user interfaces, would blow the competition out of the water.
That thought smells a bit of Newton, and that thing was by no means a miracle interface for display; it was a miracle interface for knowing what it's doing.
I haven't looked much at the technical details, but some of the examples would suggest that Android has this type of functionality...
A shame about the Java thing, mind. As John Carmack observed quite wisely, it's a great little language: For databases.
That was awesome.
google doesnt really look like it does on the picture..
Google want to achieve the same that Symbian and WindowsCE in just a few years.
And the sdk ONLY support eclipse :-( Damn, eclipse is only good for Java but a burden for other languages, specially c++.
When was the last time you used Eclipse?
Man this sounds awesome. I wonder if you would be able to download it and put it on other phones instead of it just coming pre-installed. I mean I have a 3125 from att, windows mobile is pretty sweet, but man what I wouldnt do to have android on it.
give that guy some water!!!!
thank you! I couldn't even watch the first video because it was driving me nuts listening to him talk...
lol it plays quake... classic!
The important thing with android is not that it is somehow lightyears ahead of the iPhone or WinMo, but rather the accessibility and openness of the platform. This is the major advantage. The fact that it has a feature set similar to the other major OS offerings is great. It means you can do similar app development without the barriers (apple) or cost (ms). And it should be very appealing to the HW manufacturers and Mobile Carriers because it may allow them to skip a hefty licensing fee.
This OS may not end up being that 'shiny' for the end-consumer, but it has some real appeal for the industry.
Just a follow up to my previous comment...
After looking at the SDK and other literature briefly, one of the most unique and interesting aspects of android is this:
"Android does not differentiate between the phone's basic and third-party applications -- even the dialer or home screen can be replaced."
This is sssuuuupppppeeeerrrrr unique among phone OS. This level of access and application replacement is what is necessary to truly customize or reskin a phone. I dont know of any other OS that offers this (although I am not an expert). Very interesting.
Should of used an HDRI and a bit more reflection in that render at the top.
Seeya WindowsMobile. That shames the iPhone software too.
It looks potentially very cool. I wonder though how much of the interface is customizable. The interface definitely still needs work. Especially at the beginning of the video, it wasn't clear why the keys had to be used instead of touching the screen.
One of the biggest gripes I can see so far is the reliance on menu. It's one thing that the iPhone manages to get around for the most part (and simply doesn't provide that functionality when it can't...)
The really big win the iPhone still has is that multi-touch is a really big gain. It allows Apple to treat the iPhone as a single surface you can interact with directly. You can used to just flipping through things, sliding things, zooming in, etc. without having to take your eyes away from the screen, or figure out what button to press.
It's certainly to say iPhone is not perfect. Still can't copy and paste with it. But Cocoa is a really great stack to work with. I'm very curious as to how Andriod compares. Is there an emulator for development use? Also, how hard will it be to develop common apps against different HW?
Yup, theres an emulator included with the SDK. in the tools folder.
Played around with it for a bit, was pretty awesome
"it wasn't clear why the keys had to be used instead of touching the screen."
I believe that's to let you see the screen and not his fingers. The touchscreen functionality is really trivial these days. Don't be so fast with conclusions like "the reliance on menu".
ok iam excited. looks like it could be a great 2D and 3D OS. Not sure what else you people could want. It seems pretty innovative and could e the beginning of a new ERA in mobile OS hopefully this will push MS,Nokia,Verizon and APPLE to do more for us all.
Give the people what they want.. Freedom on a OS!
As far as i can see the advanced phone he uses is the htc one that is shown all around that big one with the screen slides open and you get a keyboard
This (to me) is more exiting than the iPhone!
Coming from someone listening to an iPod Classic, typing on an Apple Keyboard, and saving for the iMac 24"
If the idiots of Palm were to stick this on their Treo's it would make for one fine device. They're hardware is already there (i.e. 3G, touchscreen) all they need to do is graph it onto their phone! I'd buy that.
Don't call people idiots until you can master fifth-grade punctuation.
They're is a contraction. It is short hand for they are.
An 's at the end of a noun indicates possession. An s with no apostrophe indicates plurality. So it should be Treos not Treo's.
So, you didn't actually have anything to add, you just wanted to nitpick on grammar? My grammar is usually excellent, but forgive me if I don't spend the time on a sentence-long post on Engadget. How about, instead, targeting the people who leave comments where "to" becomes "2" and "you are" becomes "ur." Or would you like to tackle all the fast-food restaurants that advertise having a "Drive-Thru"? But you're completely right, in this day in age perfect grammar is definitely a necessity for people who label others (see: George Bush and terrorists). Thanks for the heads-up, sport!
I want it already. Makes WiMo look like poop. I hope you can download it onto phones as carrier updates.
http://www.lemonlimedesigns.ca/blogs
^intended for the comment before mine I'm guessing. Kinda makes you look like the idiot.
I'm really loving my iPhone even more after watching those videos.
Yeah, freedom sucks.
scott baio is involved?? i'm sold!
I think some people are missing the point. Google's focus is to release a platform that will support great applications created by third parties. Apple's intent was to deliver a complete solution which they orginally didn't want anyone else to tamper with. To compare what you see in these videos to the Iphone doesn't make sense. The videos basically show u the equivelent of a "hello world" application just to show you the most basic app implrementation and a couple key concepts. Hence the $10 million give away... it's to encourage people to create great applications on their architecture. Give it another 2 months... people will create some very interesting applications. You'll get a better idea of how apps can link to each other and link with online data. Then you can really assess whether Andriod lives up to the hype.
Exactly! This is the base platform. The $10 mil is to entice EVERYONE to start writing apps. This is what will bring originality. SO, while MS or Apple may have tens or hendereds or even if they had thousands of employees writing apps, Android could have an untold of amount of people. It really opens up the platform to all kinds of ideas from all walks. This could get really exciting over the next few months.
Yeah, the really important part of all of this is the openness of the platform. The open source community can build on this platform and come up with apps that have never been thought of on a phone before. Look at the PSP...hackers have expanded the PSP's functionality WAY beyond what was initially intended. Imagine what could be done on your phone.
Sounds like to me that Android will be deployable over different types of devices.
One of the earlier posts commenting about using buttons vs touch - I take it if you
want to keep the cost of a handset down (affordable to the masses) you'd have a smartphone
profile/type of device.
Google/OHA are shooting for a bigger market (both user and hardware device wise) than what Apple limits themselves to with regards to pricing on the iPhone...
I'm guessing that Android devices will be the handhelds for the rest of us..
I don't suppose it will work on Symbian?
my nokee e65 is itching for this.
The only big deal is the OpenSource roots of Android...otherwise it doesn't seem to provide anything you can't get from existing hardware/software platforms today.
Also anyone who thinks Apple isn't going to continuously improve on their mobile OSX for iPhone/iPod touch or Microsoft on their Windows Mobile or Nokia on Symbian OS are ignorant.
In the end should be an exciting next 1-2 years in the mobile market.
Seriously, have you used Windows Mobile 2003 (or whatever they called it back then)? And WM5? And WM6? I've had devices consecutively with those OSs on, and the development budget must be tiny. Bugs remain unfixed, the terrible UI consistently pops up and you need to keep checking the 'About' section to remind yourself you upgraded....
It seems that many of you are missing the point. Google's intention is not to develop an interface but a platform on top of which to build interfaces. What they demonstrated in the video was an example of what could be done. Unlike Windows Mobile or the iPhone OS, there's a clear separation between UI (user interface) and behind-the-scenes processing power. And it's open source! This means you could, conceivably, build your own interface.
WOW! He REALLY sounds excited!!! LOL!
I love how it uses Mobile Safari...
It definitely makes sense to show it off with WebKit, as it is the most mature mobile browser. Opera is second, but they've been promising Opera Mobile 9 for over a year now. By the time Android is ready to go, there should be quite a few great browsers for it, such as WebKit, Opera, and Firefox.
Something like this should be good for non mobile phone devices that need a UI such as an HDTV or cars or fridges or whatever. ok, maybe not fridges.
Anyway, I hope manufacturers ditch QVGA, cause it sucks for web browsing. I was hoping Android would minimum require VGA or higher displays.
Seems like it's also a good backdoor move for Google to get an OS on a future desktop computer that would bypass Microsoft altogether. Running Google's Office apps would require a much thinner client.
As an iPhone user, I'm nothing but excited by this. The greater the competition, the better the innovation. Cellphone UI and functionality has been painfully stagnant the last...10 years. Finally allowing innovation will only help the end user. I don't care who is the best-- Apple, Windows, Palm--even the worst will be influenced positively...or they'll be weeded out. Either works for me.
We all win.
Agreed. What would be even better is if someone managed to make a hybrid Android-based iPhone OS which could be put on the iPhone, in addition to other phones, finally doing the iPhone justice and making it into a true smartphone with full functionality.
In addition, firmware updates which try to control how people use the devices they paid for will be a thing of the past. Security holes? As with other open-source software, it will be solved by the community.
But I guess that's just me with my silly dreams of mobile utopia...
Looks pretty good so far, but I did notice some lag when dragging the web page around, pretty bad actually. Hopefully that has to do with the prototype hardware.
I didn't see any new features as far as smartphones go, but it is open source, so I don't think it needs to really exceed anything to prove its worth.
The reliance on menus was disappointing (but then again, so is the lack of copy-paste in the iPhone).
I think this is what should/maybe (probably?) will happen in the future of the smartphone business:
1. Palm should resurrect itself by ditching its software entirely and using android
2. Microsoft should leave the business entirely. They do nothing but slow down the smartphone business.
3. The iPhone/iPod touch will continue to grow.
I see the smartphone business having about equal marketshare amongst three major platforms: Google, Apple, and RIM.
Considering two of these three platforms are newcomers, I think it'll be very interesting to see what Apple has in store for its 2.0 software, and it'll be equally interesting seeing Google put their OS on every device imaginable.
Dunno why but people seem to forgot symbian all the time(yes i know most of the people here are from us). It has over 60% of the market and just by the money flow it takes from Nokia it will be number 1 for some time(as long as nokia wont throw it away). Anyways this one looks great waiting alot from it. Open to the win!!!
Oh and about osx it dosent even have 1% of the market and by the non existant hype in eu area it will get market share, but dont see it becoming one of the major player at least with what it has now. You might really go type to google about manuf and os shares ;) About googles try it seems very good and cant see why it wouldtn do well with the partners it has.
I know that it plays Quake, and it is certainly capable of Doom....
but can it run Crysis?
I hear it does if you copy the settings from the restricted level to a lower setting, and you get ~10FPS more than using Vista.
Why did anyone think think would be anything great from the start? Look at googles history with software related products, Google Desktop? YUCK! Googlebar? Yuck, The only piece of software they have thats somewhat interesting is Google Earth, but really thats just a piece of "gimmick" sofware. Google Maps, that's not innovative, maps have been around since humans, alls google did was make it mobile, and i'm sure they werent the first to do that either. See where that "Lisa: pizza sounds good" text message popped up? Well replace that with "Get webhosting for 7.99 month at webhostingblahblahblah.com" message and you've got android. You can have it :)
Will it have a kind of NES emulator?
If you or someone else writes it, then yes.
sweet. And I have no problem with the iPhone early termination fee.
the demo os looks like google is taking its interface and icon design lessons from apple...
Just because its an elegant interface doesn't make it an "APPLE COPIER OMG."
If you've ever used other Google web apps or even desktop apps, you'll know they are masters of elegant design. Personally, I like it.
I like it as well. It's just the idea of a dock at the bottom. A dock that resembles the side dock appearance of leopard. And the icon for the address book. Its an orange book with the @ symbol. Im not saying that the @ symbol belongs to apple, just the orange book + symbol combo.
I think the OS looks fine, nothing new but then again i don't really know that much about mobile OSes. The thing is that unlike computers no one buys a phone for the OS (besides the geeks, i guess) but i think that most people buy phones based on style first and then function. The motorola razor is a prime example, the OS sucked but the phone looked so cool that everyone bought one. I mean that phone alone brought moto from the brink. So all that to say i think that for cell phones all the power is in the hardware manufactures not the os guys. This is why I don't think that this thing by itself will really have any impact on something like the apple iphone in terms of sales (it's stock price is another matter). We will have to see what the hardware guys do.
All JAVA. On a mobile phone. No thanks. Get back to me when i can do native apps.
What's wrong with Java? (And I want a reason that's not 4 years old)
Thats really picky considering there are no other platforms that are open.
No reasons that are over four years old? What kind of a criteria is that? Are we not allowed to say that Windows has gapping security holes, that Macs are overpriced, and that Linux is never going to take over due to its steep learning curve because all those complaints have been around for over four years? Are we not allowed to praise Google because we've been praising it for over four years? Are we not allowed to criticize Bush because people have been been saying the same things about him for over four years? Fact is, Java in its native form is slow. Period. Great for portability, but slow as a snail race on a molasses track. Sure, you can build faster Java code by making a lot of sacrifices. But with the sacrifices you make, you'd be better off using a lower-level language. As someone that does scientific computing, I am obsessed with speed (when you're crunching million element arrays, you kinda have to be,) and I would never, ever touch Java with a ten foot pole. Yes, yes, Java is faster now than it used to be. It's still not fast enough.
I blame the universities, personally. At my home university, the only language the CS people seriously taught the students was Java. And we were considered a "good" CS program in the region. Yeah, they had to take an assembly course, but that was more of a "this is how a processor" works class more than anything. I'm not including scripting languages here. When that's all you teach your students, the old adage of "when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail" comes into play. Fact is, you need to know multiple languages in order to be even a competent programmer, and that's something our universities are glossing over in order to get kids into the workplace. Java is not useful for native apps. Java is useful in applications were speed is relatively unimportant. Native apps don't have this luxury.
Last time I checked, I don't have to pay royalties whenever I want to program a C, C++, or even an assembly program. Whether a language is "open" or not means nothing to a programmer, as long as no one's asking for royalties for using the language. It means a lot to the open source people (don't get me wrong, I like Linux a lot for certain uses,) but even the Linux kernel is primarily C, if not completely C. A open-source project does not need to use Java just because it's an open source standard, and not a lot of important open-source projects do anyway.
Java is damn slow on mobiles. But it is very portable. Having to support a C/C++ framework would be a ton of work for Google. It can be done (see BREW). But good luck supporting a BREW like system on every mobile device alive.
When it runs Python, count me in! I hate Java!
I don't think you will be able to just load it on any phone, I am sure it will have certain processing requirements
Looks great, cant wait.
Plus i want that white E61 looking handset, exactly like that with the curvy edges an stuff. Looks awesome.
MPEG-4 and h.264 decoding? I'm going to assume this will be in hardware. Any chance we'll see this code ported to XvMC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Video_Motion_Compensation), VAAPI (http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/vaapi), or NVIDIA/ATI/Intel drivers?