Google Phone

Overshadowed by Google’s partner-packed Android launch, LiPS (the Linux Phone Standards Forum) has nonetheless pushed ahead with phase two of their mobile Linux specification, released to developers this week.  Differentiating themselves from the work of the Open Handset Alliance by defining their project as broad standards for any Linux-based cellphone, as opposed to Android’s specific implementation, the guidelines set out a number of key telephony, UI, messaging and presence functions that would allow developers to produce applications compatible with any smartphone that adhered to the LiPS criteria.

“The basic notion of what OHA and Android put forth is an implementation of a phone stack that is Java-based and a given implementation.  If that implementation is broadly accepted and devices are built on it, it could constitute a de facto standard. Our approach is a traditional one of standardization” Bill Weinberg, General Manager, LiPS

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Nokia has hit back at Google’s Android platform, with CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo dismissing the Open Handset Alliance’s OS launch with the suggestion that the Finnish company themselves have already trodden much of the software ground Google and partners are currently bringing attention to: “conceptually, we could have made that announcement a long time ago.”  In fact, with their announcement of the Ovi internet-services project - that has recently clinched the support of Vodafone, already a vocal critic of Android - that will combine their music and mapping services, as well as hints of geo-targeted advertising, their position as chief rival to the Google OS seems increasingly cemented.

“Mobile phones have two qualities that PCs don’t have: they’re always with you, and they tell other people where you are” Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO, Nokia

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In a move almost certain to be a calculated response to Verizon’s sudden bursting open of their CDMA network, AT&T has decided to begin publicising the fact that customers can use any GSM handset they wish with the company’s services, rather than needing to buy a vouchsafed model from AT&T’s range.  That should go some way to excusing the carrier’s absence from Google’s OHA; while Android is not directly supported, handsets built on the platform should have no problems accessing AT&T’s service as long as they adhere to the GSM standard.  It’s rather a case of making existing options better known than introducing new features; AT&T has had such an open-access policy for several years, but preferred to keep it quiet so as to encourage new customers to buy cellphones from them rather than reuse their old model.

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Perhaps we should’ve seen it coming, but the news that Verizon Wireless is - in sentiment if not in certificate - signing up to the Open Handset Alliance still registers as something of a surprise.  The carrier, which hinted at its open-access intentions earlier this month by announcing that it would allow non-Verizon-designed devices to use its network from 2008 (and was, from some quarters at least, roundly criticised for “paying lip-service” to the newly fashionable concept), has gone one further and called Android “an enabler of what we do.”

CEO Lowell McAdam broke the news that, what was previously the most closed of the US operators, would now use Android with a rejoinder to sceptics that open-access has been brewing at Verizon for the past twelve months.  He cites his experience at European and Asian networks, and the positive effect he saw of customers being able to move devices in-between companies, as a primary reason for pushing for the relaxed boundaries.  Devices will still need to satisfy initial checks but the onus for compatibility will be left with manufacturers and developers rather than Verizon itself; similarly, the customer service remit will change from the in-depth support offered for users of the network’s core range to handset or application providers.

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Somewhere in the caves of the internet there are people playing Robert Scoble Bingo - you can get a full house if you predict which technologies will float the former Microsoft tech-evangelist’s boat, without getting sidetracked by those he takes an avid dislike to.  Latest under Robert’s loupe is Android, and if you thought an open-source, Linux-based free platform together with $10m of financial backing for developers would make him moist around the pelvis then think again; he’s not impressed.

“I didn’t see ONE feature that will get normal people to switch from the iPhone. This comes across like something developers developed for other developers without thought of how they were going to build a movement” Robert Scoble

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It was HTC’s “Dream” reference design that supposedly had a large part in persuading companies to sign up to the Open Handset Alliance, to the extent that the handset manufacturer is considering putting a commercial version into production sometime next year, but their other Android plans have been up until now less than clear.  However, at a meeting with investment firms in Taiwan last week, company CEO Peter Chou revealed that, if it really is released, the Dream will be one of 2-3 gPhones using the Android platform that HTC intend to supply in 2008.

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Could harsh-talking Symbianite John Forsyth have been right about wary developers eyeing up the Android platform with less than stellar enthusiasm?  CNET News spoke to a number of mobile programmers about the prospect of Google’s OHA and the upcoming gPhone SDK, and the feedback seems to indicate more than a little reticence:

“Right now, Android just adds to the headache of developing different versions of our applications for different operating systems … It will be just another platform we have to support” Kay Johansson, CTO, MobiTV

Analysts are already glancing nervously at earlier attempts to standardise the mobile app space, particularly the work of Sun Microsystems, whose Java programming language promised “write once, publish many”, and OHA-member Qualcomm who developed the BREW app development environment.  Despite the best efforts of both companies, neither has managed to fundamentally change the adaptation and modification that’s necessary to coerce software into running on different handsets and across different networks.

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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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Suggestions that HTC have one or more Android-based Google cellphones already waiting in the wings have been percolating for months now, and so Google-Phone’s Vincent Nguyen spoke to the handset manufacturer to see just what affect the open-source OS might have on their range.  Key among HTC’s concerns was that Windows Mobile - the OS that currently powers the majority of handsets available either under their own name or with operator branding - has not been ousted by Android.  Instead, models based upon both platforms will be available, and while we couldn’t get HTC to elaborate on specific details for their Android model(s) they confirmed that it would be a heavily data-centric device designed to fully leverage Google’s suite of web-enabled applications.

Further indication of future Android cellphone development comes from the presence of Synaptics, cryptically listed in the Open Handset Alliance member directory as supplying ”a variety of user input solutions for mobile devices”.  Our sister-site, SlashGear, scored an exclusive hands-on late last year with one of Synaptics concept devices, the Onyx, which at the time was rumoured to form the basis of Apple’s iPhone.  Instead, Apple went with a relatively home-grown model and Synaptics licenced their multiple-touch-sensitive capacitive display to rivals such as LG for use in their Prada cellphone and, more recently, in Samsung’s F700 “Croix”.

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