More and more information about future Android-powered handsets surfaced this week. Samsung and LG apparently won’t be releasing a handset until at least Q3 2009, giving T-Mobile more than amazing sales opportunities. T-Mobile expects to sell half a million handsets in 2008 alone.
Motorola has confirmed rumors that they are expanding their Android team by as many as 300 members. In other rumors, Nokia and Verizon were reportedly spotted at a recent Android developer conference put on by Google. We also heard that China Mobile may be working on a TD-SCDMA 3G Android Phone. Android Community also managed to get an exclusive hands on with the G1 and award winning Android application ShopSavvy, formerly known as GoCart. The app you to scan a barcode at the store, and immediately get local store prices as well as online prices for that particular item.
Android Community has also undergone several new changes and upgrades. Our new layout is now much better organized and hopefully easier to navigate. We are happy to announce the addition of our Knowledge Base (KB), which includes General Guides and Tips & Tricks. We have also added a user blog where you can blog about anything you wish: happy about getting your G1, just blog about it! Now users can upload personal pictures to our Member Photo Album or submit Android related photos to your flikr page. Special thanks to Ewdi for putting in the time and effort to make this site what it is.
Many of us are very excited to hear that the G1 will be ready for 16 Gig microSD cards right out of the box. More astonishing news was heard with the explanation of Applications Without Boarders. The simple concept of applications being able to share data and work off of each other. Several different applications may now use the same database library created by another. Screen shots of BestBuy’s inventory hint that they will be receiving the G1 in November. While no one can confirm this as of yet, it looks highly possible with the time frame in which BestBuy received the iPhone 3G.
Andy Ruben spoke about the differences between Android Market and Apple’s App Store, and has revealed there will be no bandwith limitations for Android applications, T-Mobile has asked that developers with free apps, that take more than 15 Megabytes a month for a single user, pay a $2 monthly fee. With the recent demand of the G1 T-Mobile has tripled the production of G1 handsets available for pre-order before October 22nd and managed to sell through them all already. Android software engine Andy Stadler spoke about how Android is fully embedded with search. T-Mobile has officially released the G1 emulator with 360 view. This emulator allows you to go thought the phone almost as if you had it in front of you.
Photo courtesy of Android Community member heyitsnan.
