Comments on: Google Android: Open OS odyssey, or overreach? http://www.taptu.com/blog/2007/11/13/google-android-open-os-odyssey-or-overreach/ Taptu is a search engine for your mobile phone. Starting with music and fact-finding, we offer tons of snippets to help you find what you need quickly on your mobile. Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:47:51 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 By: Carnival of Mobilists 100th Edition http://www.taptu.com/blog/2007/11/13/google-android-open-os-odyssey-or-overreach/#comment-1846 Carnival of Mobilists 100th Edition Mon, 19 Nov 2007 15:49:34 +0000 http://www.taptu.com/blog/2007/11/13/google-android-open-os-odyssey-or-overreach/#comment-1846 [...] the component nature of the new mobile OS from Google. On the other hand Steve Ives of Taptology discusses the implications of Android on the mobile market. James Pearce of Tripleodeon provides his coverage of [...] [...] the component nature of the new mobile OS from Google. On the other hand Steve Ives of Taptology discusses the implications of Android on the mobile market. James Pearce of Tripleodeon provides his coverage of [...]

]]> By: Paul http://www.taptu.com/blog/2007/11/13/google-android-open-os-odyssey-or-overreach/#comment-1504 Paul Tue, 13 Nov 2007 22:28:01 +0000 http://www.taptu.com/blog/2007/11/13/google-android-open-os-odyssey-or-overreach/#comment-1504 I watched the intro video and it appears that the gphone prototype does do 3G, uses webkit based web browser (gee, thanks, Apple!); it talks about telephony apps, but doesn't really go into them, only really demonstrating an SMS function. If Google had more to show, they would have done, so I think so far it's a mobile web browser with suite of libraries that run on linux. I predict that the $10M bounty will stir up a lot of amateur developers to get some apps out there in the hope of winning a share. The community opensource mobile phone has already been tried, in the form of OpenMoko, and though it's achieving some success, results have been much slower than hoped for. The alternative, to port Linux to an existing hardware platform has also not been particularly quick: the much lusted after HTC Universal has taken a long time to reverse engineer in order to get linux working well enough. The handheld/mobile linux space is quite fragmented, there are perhaps too many variations of user interface software toolkits (Qt/Qtopia in various forms, Opie - a Qtopia derivative, GPE, Hildon/Maemo from Nokia Tablet, OpenMoko, and others) which have caused development efforts perhaps to be spread too thinly? I welcome the Google initiative. Palm have floundered badly, Symbian/S60/UIQ has too many issues on high end smartphones, and pocketPC/windowsMobile/winCE is locked down preventing fair use of media files by the user and rendering older devices quickly obsolete. I watched the intro video and it appears that the gphone prototype does do 3G, uses webkit based web browser (gee, thanks, Apple!); it talks about telephony apps, but doesn’t really go into them, only really demonstrating an SMS function. If Google had more to show, they would have done, so I think so far it’s a mobile web browser with suite of libraries that run on linux.

I predict that the $10M bounty will stir up a lot of amateur developers to get some apps out there in the hope of winning a share.

The community opensource mobile phone has already been tried, in the form of OpenMoko, and though it’s achieving some success, results have been much slower than hoped for. The alternative, to port Linux to an existing hardware platform has also not been particularly quick: the much lusted after HTC Universal has taken a long time to reverse engineer in order to get linux working well enough.

The handheld/mobile linux space is quite fragmented, there are perhaps too many variations of user interface software toolkits (Qt/Qtopia in various forms, Opie - a Qtopia derivative, GPE, Hildon/Maemo from Nokia Tablet, OpenMoko, and others) which have caused development efforts perhaps to be spread too thinly?

I welcome the Google initiative. Palm have floundered badly, Symbian/S60/UIQ has too many issues on high end smartphones, and pocketPC/windowsMobile/winCE is locked down preventing fair use of media files by the user and rendering older devices quickly obsolete.

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