Google Phone

On Monday we showed you the video of Texas Instruments’ non-touchscreen Android prototype at the Mobile World Congress; today we’ve got their touchscreen version demonstrated live on video. Two aspects of this demo stand out for me, firstly the hardware itself - TI have put together what they claim is a sub-$1,000 reference platform targeted predominantly at the open-source community - and secondly as this is a great, working example of the “building blocks” menu GUI we saw in the latest Android release.

Check out the TI touchscreen reference platform after the cut

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You may not have heard of E28, but they have something particularly rare on show at the Mobile World Congress: a current, off-the-shelf handset that’s running Google’s Android cellphone platform. I stopped by to shoot some video and find out exactly how well the Android OS works, away from reference designs and hardware test-beds; remember, this is basically E28’s E2831 quadband GSM smartphone, with WiFi, a 2.2-inch QVGA touchscreen and 1.3-megapixel camera, entirely stock aside from the OS. The good news? Android works pretty damn well indeed.

Check out the video of the E28 Android phone in action after the cut!

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It was only a matter of time - and a number of positive headlines proclaiming Android as “savour of the cellphone” - before competing firms stepped up and gave their opinions, and so far it’s been a mixture of the scathing, the subtle and the sidestep.  First up is Symbian, whose heated diatribe with the BBC leaves little room for confusion as to their stance on Google’s Linux-based platform:

“About every three months this year there has been a mobile Linux initiative of some sort launched.  It’s a bit like the common cold. It keeps coming round and then we go back to business” John Forsyth, Vice President of Strategy, Symbian

Forsyth goes on to criticise Google’s apparent confidence that they can translate their expertise in search technology into the cellular world, suggesting that they not only lack the support backbone to maintain Android but that third-party developers would be reluctant to shift focus to produce software compatible with the platform.

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