Google Phone

The deadline for phase one of Google’s Android Developer Challenge closed yesterday, and so the entrants are beginning to show off their wares. One of the more eye-catching is Enkin, an augmented reality app for Android which overlays GPS, motion information and other data over a live camera view of a user’s surroundings. As an idea it’s similar to designer Mac Funamizu’s encyclopedia frame concept, using real-time queries of online information to offer users pertinent information about their environment.

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Three US government representatives have alleged that Google wilfully manipulated the recent 700MHz spectrum auction, and as a result potentially dissuaded bids in excess of $10bn extra. Republicans Cliff Stearns and John Shimkus together with Democrat Eliot Engel used a hearing today to express their concerns that, in pledging to meet the $4.6bn reserve set for Block C and thus secure open-access, new potential bidders were deterred.

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Vincent attended the AT&T Media lunch where Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO of AT&T discussed the company’s plans to collaborate with Google in producing handsets running the open-source Android OS. In discussing upcoming handsets, de la Vega revealed that, following demonstrations of Android prototypes and discussion with the Google team behind the platform, he was convinced to one day include cellphones based on it in AT&T’s range.

“What I’m saying is I like it a lot more than before … We’re now looking to see when it’s ready to be developed. Now I’m in the camp where I’m positive that it’s something I’d want in our portfolio” Ralph de la Vega today, president and CEO, AT&T

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If there’s one thing the FCC auction has shown us, it’s that Google is pretty sneaky when it comes to getting their own way. They set their sights on open-access - which would mean devices running Android, even if not officially picked up by any of the carriers, would be able to access the new 700MHz networks set to roll out in 2009 - and persuaded the FCC to add the provisos in on the understanding that Google would take responsibility to push Block C over its reserve.

Of course, we now know that Google was a minor player in the auctions and came away with nothing; Verizon stumped up the cash for Block C, Google gets its open-access, and the FCC goes scampering to the bank. Now the search giant is back, apparently set to deliver a proposal to the FCC for “white space” access: that’s the unsold spectrum in-between the digital TV channels. As you might expect, Google see both portable and fixed broadband devices, running Android, and compatible with both white space and Verizon’s Block C.

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Fresh from Google’s test labs comes the as-yet-unannounced “LCB“, which some are calling “searchless search”. Actually, it’s still search, it’s just a mobile way of accessing categorised business listings based on location: enter your address and choose from seven predefined sections - Food/Restaurant, Travel, Transportation, Retail, Entertainment, Sports and, oddly, Googleplex - which all have local attractions.

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If Google’s Rich Miner was a developer, he’d be coding for the iPhone; however, he’s actually Group Manager for Mobile Platforms, and as such is more interested in boosting Android’s profile with confident predictions that handsets based on the platform will wildly outsell Apple’s cellphone.

“Once you have devices out there from Motorola, HTC, Samsung, and so on, there’s a much larger potential market on Android than for the iPhone. [Apple is] a single manufacturer, it’s targeted at a particular demographic, and it falls far short of the 1 billion mobile phones sold every year worldwide” Rich Miner, Google

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Having gone to Barcelona more than a little ambivalent about Android, Vincent ended up pretty impressed by the state of Google’s mobile OS (you can read all our coverage here); from what he saw, the software and hardware partners Google has managed to bring on board are doing a pretty good job of turning what could be just another Linux cellphone distro into something capable of threatening Symbian and Windows Mobile. It looks like the BBC’s Darren Waters feels much the same way after meeting with Android developer Andy Rubin (and shooting the video you can see after the cut); despite demonstrating an alpha version of the software stack, the handset Rubin brought was still capable of browsing the full internet, smoothly showing Google Maps and even the hitherto desktop-only Street View location-image app.

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Although nowhere near as polished as the offerings from Sony Ericsson, Samsung and the rest, a number of Android prototypes and reference designs are on show here at the Mobile World Congress, and I’ve been shooting exclusive video demos of them for PHONE Magazine. Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and ARM all had displays, and in the three videos after the cut you can see exactly what they would - and wouldn’t! - show me. In Qualcomm’s case, the setup might have looked cobbled together and the processor is the last-gen 7201a, but the screen was an amazing WVGA touchscreen running at 800 x 480; that’s the same sort of display Sony Ericsson picked for their XPERIA X1.

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Google has released a new version of the Android SDK, m5-rc14, making significant GUI and API changes that, in many cases, have been prompted by developer feedback. Layout animations have now been included, making transitions within and between apps smoother, a greater number of audio codecs are supported (including Ogg Vorbis and MIDI) and there’s a geocoding process that streamlines location searches in the mapping software.

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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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