(+11 rating, 19 votes)
Loading ...Google’s latest Android prototype is miles improved over the versions we last saw. Back at CES the GUI was clunky and the whole thing looked relatively primative; Google themselves asked us to keep an open mind and instead concentrate on the OS’ potential. Now, they’ve brought out a device that you could, frankly, mistake for production hardware. The HTC Android Dream phone is a worthy competitor to the forthcoming iPhone 2.0!
As our exclusive demo videos show, the Android team have been putting in some long hours bringing the user interface up to the standard people expect. The iPhone sets the bar high, and leftfield rivals like Samsung’s TouchWiz GUI really pile on the pressure. What they’ve given us is, at first glance, a blend of the successful parts of each of those, together with a dose of Google’s own minimalist aesthetic. Hopefully you’ll agree with us, once you’ve looked through the photos and watched the video, that the design is a winner.
In this first video, we see an overview of the new interface and menu structure, including the clever pattern-based unlock screen. Much of the GUI can be interacted with - for instance pulling down the title bar reveals missed calls and new messages - using the familiar palatte of swipes and taps. You can also see the straightforward way to create shortcuts on the home screen; a matter of holding down your finger and then following through the contextual menus.
Next up, Google’s Street View gets the Android treatment with a built-in compass. That lets you pan around the location-based image, turning the handset into something of an augmented reality device. As you can tell by the applause, this was one of the most popular apps!
Google briefly touched on their work with developers, including the latest round of entries in their Android Developers Challenge. Here you can see a port of Pacman, developed for the handset:
In this last video, a demo of Google Maps, you can see how closely the Android experience matches that of the desktop. All of the usual mapping options are present - satellite views, traffic, etc. - and, with a 3G network, load and update quickly.
Pac-Man on Android for the firs time!
Customize how you want to unlock Android
May 28th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Thanks a lot, and cheers for the youtube video - there was no info about where to find pics, or video etc on the I/O site of Google. It’s great to see this. Hopefully you can blog what was said at the keynote soon, as it isn’t totally clear from just the photos. Nice to see Google Earth Browser plugin here too.
May 28th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
all well and good, and good-locking too, but when can we buy a device using this OS?
May 28th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Nice coverage. Improvements?, not so much.
httx://mikecane2008.wordpress.com/2008/05/28/android-show-me-the-ccp/
May 28th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
The UI is still ugly.
Take a hint from Apple: there’s really no room for 2.5D effects on a mobile screen. Go flat instead.
May 28th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Cool. Almost as good as iPhone 2007. Keep up the hard work guys.
May 28th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Bit of a disappointment, in that the iPhone interface ripoffs are pretty blatent and shameless. The iPhone UI is great, but it’s certainly not the only way to do things.
May 28th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Compass Street View integration makes my stomach tingle I want it so bad.
I don’t exactly know why, but I need this. It has reduced me to a fan-boy that would wait in a line for hours in the rain for this.
Awesome!
May 28th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
So if it rips some ideas of iPhone. Cool, the iPhone has some great ideas. But this video convinces me that there is more to life then the iphone.
If Google is close to the iPhone, it will eclipse it as, close means all the advantages, plus Andriod has no of the disadvantages. (Its not totally locked down by steve and only runs what HE wants.)
It will be as big if not bigger then iPhone. (Iphone for example has a huge number of restrictions a lot of my friends laugh at. Ie cannot bluetooth a file to another phone. Thats a show stopper for MANY people.)
So if I can get a Iphone type phone with no restrictions, I would go for it. And right now, thats called a Android phone.
But up until Android is released on a commercialy avilable phone, I will want an iPhone (G3 when released here in Aust)
James
May 28th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Compass mode is just beyond awesome - PLEASE hurry up and make that hardware available!!!
May 28th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
There is an iframe ad on this page that is running a script that automatically redirects the viewer to a domain squatter link site. I will not post the link here to avoid giving more publicity to the site, but please, take care of what ads you display as to not drive people away from your content. I have to admit that the first thing I did before I was even able to view the content of your post was to add that particular domain to AdBlock so I could actually view the post.
May 29th, 2008 at 7:33 am
This will be my new phone… I’m glad that Android has surpassed ALL my expectations
Here’s an Android wallpaper I made:
http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/4897/androidwallpaperscreensfo1.jpg
May 29th, 2008 at 9:01 am
It’s great to see Apple’s innovation with the iPhone being copied and implemented elsewhere, it seems Google is even doing some innovation of their own. Bottom line will be better handsets for everyone, and it is not Windows!
May 29th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Oh my god :O this thing is really working, i was a Symbian fan until 10 minutes ago, i thought it was not going to be such a big deal until the second generation of this OS, but now i m really doubting if buying a Palm Centro or wait for this thing . . .
Hey, dont rush yourselves about the release, i rather buy something 100% tested than something with lots of bugs, quality over quantity !
May 29th, 2008 at 11:49 pm
What no mention of comparison’s to Microsoft, Symbian, etc. Apple and Google without a doubt are light years ahead of Microsoft in the “smart phone” arena. I predict Microsoft is on the way out; Apple and Symbian will dominate the “consumer phone arena” leaving Google and RIM to capture the business and developer markets. Both Apple and Google really need to work on methods for competing with RIM for those spending most of their time text messaging. I for one am starting to get more and more using over voice.
May 30th, 2008 at 9:34 am
Well,
Nice demos but until I’ll see a good IDE to develop I’ll stick to windows mobile and visual studio…
May 30th, 2008 at 9:56 am
I was looking for the andriod to be standing at a terminal playing pac-man. I guess I just get excited about a phone with features taht I will never ever use.
May 30th, 2008 at 10:37 am
Interesting. All the Google phone does is to show off the Google Map.
Yes, that’s what I saw here, nothing else.
So you guys are going to just buy a phone for GMap?
May 31st, 2008 at 10:26 am
Waiting for LG to throw in their hand.
May 31st, 2008 at 1:46 pm
The UI is still pretty cluttered, definitely needs a lot more polish. They should also smooth up the map (preloading when scrolling), and dragging the clock looks just weird. I’m not really sure why I would want to clutter the UI with draggable icons, they should just be neatly organized by default. All in all looks like an attempt to squeeze too many features into too few screens.
May 31st, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Thanks for this great report, it was very interesting!!
May 31st, 2008 at 5:08 pm
I think Google has done an interesting job replicating the iPhone functionality; it, unfortunately for them, is a testimonial to how important multi-touch is to user experience. I look forward to android phones hitting the market: They will do much to narrow the gap between the iphone and everyone else — they just don’t close that gap. It will be interesting to see what the app development community does.
June 1st, 2008 at 12:18 am
I have to say I’m impressed. They seem to understand many of the features that make the iPhone great and are adding some of their own interface tweaks (I like the alert pull down and the browser zoom may give safari a run for it’s money). But don’t be stupid about this. The iPhone has a year of momentum and bug fixes and. It will have another 6 months with what looks to be one of the best mobile API’s available.
What they demoed is a good competitor for the current iPhone with the advantages of open development and if it was out at the beginning of 2008, it would have been a big problem for Apple. But they will not be out till the end of the year and the iPhone will be 6 months into 2.0 OS and hardware with serious rumors about what 3.0 will be like. Android may do very well (if they can find a carrier to allow it to run free). But this is still Apple’s to loose, with the combination of iTunes, iPod, iPhone, AppleTV they have the upper-hand.
June 1st, 2008 at 8:07 am
This phone doesn’t rip off apple ideas anymore than apple ripped off ideas that already existed for it’s product. When when the fruit does it, it’s called “innovation”. Well, shoe, meet your new friend: the other foot.
Besides, who knows how much of the (vowel)Phone’s design was done for apple by an outside designer….
If only we could get S60 phones that were decently zippy without costing this month’s mortgage…
June 28th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
mmmm, maybe i should wait a little longer before buying the new iPhone.
July 3rd, 2008 at 8:54 am
A closed mind will opt IPhone. Or the one who has invested in IPhone has closed his mind. An Open SDK of Android has tremendous opportunities for any one and every one. The very though of open OS makes Android phone march past the IPhones. The IPhone is not in everyone’s pocket makes the situation worse for IPhone.
July 3rd, 2008 at 10:33 am
Its a cool phone… I use HTC Tech and I love it … its much better than the IPhone that my friend has…..
IPhone is a good gadjet… but not soo good as a phone
Cool job Google and HTC
I will look forward for the HTC Dream 
July 12th, 2008 at 4:39 am
I just noticed that they hide the bottom half of the phone in all the shots. Wanna bet it’s an HTC Cruiser?
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:03 am
Looks good so far. The features are pretty nice. Loose the useless widgets (um, you have 2 clocks, 1 widget clock, and 1 in upper right corner). The icons are butt ugly cartoons, looks like its for kids. Work on a new icon set, it will make the interface more appealing. Interface is one major selling point these days. The HTC Touch Diamond and Touch Pro have a really nice looking interface, that also uses touch flow. If you want to go this route with android, use a useful minimal compiz interface for the 3D look touch interface to access programs and such.
Sorry But I dont see archaic GUI interface designs leading the future of devices of all kind. Sorry but that is just my critique. I will install this in my HTC phone and customize it to my liking. After all this should be possible.
Something unrelated to Android, I wish Nikola Tesla lived for 300 years to push us in the direction of more efficient use of greater possibilities. Wireless technology (discovered by Tesla in the late 1800s) would have been the norm in the 1960s and today we would be beyond that.
July 24th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
What *exactly* is the practical use of the compass tied to a map?
Honestly?
if you’re not at the intersection, then you’ll probably hurt yourself spinning around just to look around.
if you’re AT the intersection, you don’t need a map. Just twirl around.
Why doesn’t anyone but Apple show real-world demos?
August 1st, 2008 at 6:51 am
Really really amazing and beautiful graphics ..
i love this style and hope it will be in market soon………………….
August 13th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Its time to get down into the market ANDY, apples are no more cANDY fruit these days
August 15th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
yeah but does google keep mp3 and transcipts of your phone calls for “advertising” purposes?
August 16th, 2008 at 12:00 am
It is good that the iPhone will have some competition..someday.
For now, Apple has quite a lead and will be very hard to catch up with them. They have
the eco-system in place … hardware, software, distribution.
Too bad Apple had to break ground for other companies to notice that there was
a huge market on this. Why is it that other companies are very afraid of braking
ground like Apple does?
He who hits first … hits twice!
August 18th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
It looks like another copycat to me. I’ll take iPhone over Android any day unless this phone is free.