The first mobile phone powered by Google was launched yesterday, ready to do battle with Apple’s iPhone for the top spot on many people’s Christmas gift list.
The event, featuring whooping and cheering more often associated with the unveiling of new Apple products, revealed the first handset to run on “Android” — Google’s new software for mobile phones. The arrival of Android signals the opening round of the battle between Google and its rivals, such as Nokia and Apple, to create software for the next generation of mobile phones that allows users to connect seamlessly to the internet.
A Google spokesman said that, these days, using phones “does not just mean a phone call, but rather access to the world’s information” and that mobiles will be one of the most important ways to connect to the internet in future.
However, when The Times was granted a first glance at the new device, the phone did not seem to offer a ground-breaking feature to rival the “wow factor” of the iPhone’s touchscreen. Instead, the G1 happily adopts the best features of the iPhone and BlackBerry — two of the best smart phones on the market.
It has the easy-to-navigate and intuitive touchscreen, like the iPhone. But, like the BlackBerry, it has a qwerty keyboard, which slides out, and a “trackball” that helps you navigate around the screen.
And there are more Androidpowered phones to come, with the manufacturers LG and Samsung likely to reveal mobiles that run on the software next year.
Google also hopes to take the lead over Apple by making Android “open source” — meaning that people will not be charged to use it on their handset or for writing applications for it.
This means that anyone can write programs that will run free of charge on an Android-powered phone |
