T-Mobile G1 - Google Android
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What makes this phone so interesting isn’t the hardware; it’s the operating system. It is the first phone to be released with Google’s open source Android OS. It is built on a Linux kernel which handles the security, memory management, process management, network stack, and driver model.
Google demoed the beta version about a year ago and left us licking our lips for a phone that runs this from a cell phone provider. T-Mobile jumped in and released the first phone with it. What is this OS all about?
The biggest point that has made people want this OS is that it is open source. This means that the source code for the OS is freely available and open to people to modify and change. Android applications will be built on Java coding. The down side here is that it won’t use the typical standards of Java, such as SE or ME, but instead Apache.
Applications can be made with close integration to the OS. Google Maps will be included on nearly every phone with GPS. And Google and T-Mobile have a few tricks up their sleeves that will let them get a jump on other smart phones already on the market.
What Android will have that the iPhone and Windows Mobile versions don’t have is a compass. It’s great that you can pull up directions to anywhere you want, but sometimes getting going in the right direction is hard, or you can’t get directions to the place you are going. The new compass feature will come in handy for many people.
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