Suddenly, Android is hot again
Earlier this month Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch was wondering if anybody cared about Android any more. Now TC is practically gushing over the mobile platform. What happened? Two things:
First, Google released a long awaited update to the Android software development kit. Developer Advocate Dan Morrill wrote:
The beta SDK that we're releasing today is the first big step on the SDK's road to compatibility with 1.0. Since this is a beta release, applications developed with it may not quite be compatible with devices running the final Android 1.0. However, the APIs are now pretty stable and we don't expect any major changes. If you're one of the many developers who were waiting for something a bit more mature, this might be a good time to take another look.
You're probably wondering what's actually new in the SDK. Well, you should read the Release Notes, the Change Overview and the API Delta Report for all the details.
Unfortunately the details released by Google were, shall we say, incomplete, but the good folks over on the Android discussion groups have been striving to fill in the gaps.
The second thing that happened is that news started to leak out about the new G1 phone from T-Mobile (formerly known as the HTC Dream). A shout-out goes to the folks over at AndroidGuys who broke the story. Rumor has it that the phone will be available for pre-sale in September and we might have it in our hot little hands by October. Of course, if a demo unit were to *happen* to be sent to a certain ZDNet blogger before then, that would be much appreciated (hint, hint). Hopefully current SunCom customers will be able to use it too.
According to the latest update, the T-Mobile G1 handset will pack a ton of features including:
- A slide-out QUERTY keyboard and trackball
- 3 megapixel camera
- Dedicated YouTube player
- SMS and MMS support
- 3G for fast Internet
- 3.17" screen (480x320 resolution)
Two features which aren't confirmed yet but everybody is assuming the G1 will have is GPS and a touch screen. Remember that this is just the first Android phone; because Android is an open platform any number of manufacturers will be free to create their own version.
New software... new hardware... Android is back, baby! (Now if they could just find someone to update that crappy OHA web site...)
[ Read: More about Android on Dev Connection ]