Android Developer Phone
Google have just announced the availability of their Android Developer phone. Most of the sites reporting this have missed the real significance of this. They talk about how the phone is SIM and OS unlocked and how the phone might be suitable for developers in countries other than the US and UK where the G1 is already available.
The real significance is that it’s the first shipping phone that allows any developer to change, rebuild and re-load the OS. Yes, there are others more obscure OSs such as OpenMoko that also allow you to do this but the phones (and OS) are still experimental and not shipping in consumer phones. You can’t currently do this with Symbian, Windows Mobile, Blackberry or the iPhone without being a member of the device creation community (the handset OEMs or their licensees or partners).
When Google first announced Android, I thought some Android phones would be more like PCs - available without carrier contract. I was disappointed with the G1 in that it was tied to T-Mobile and appeared to be so Google centric that it comes across as a Google Trojan Horse - an underhand way of forcing you to use Google applications. Yes, handset OEMs can replace the built in Google applications - but I have also questioned the viability of doing this in that it’s very difficult (read expensive) for phone OEMs to match and replace Google’s offerings.
The availability of the Android Developer Phone balances things up a bit. It provides opportunities for innovation by allowing anyone, not just members of the device creation community to experiment with, improve and replace components within the Android OS. But how will end users gain access to these modified components? First of all, some may be submitted to the Google codebase and end up in all future phones. Other’s might just end up in a subset of phones.
Meanwhile, people are already starting to experiment with ‘Android as an OS’ rather than ‘Android as an application platform’. For example, there are examples of it running on the Nokia 810, a Qualcomm chipset, OMAP, Armadillo-500 and even a Sharp Zaurus. Some such as Kogan and the i6-Goal are even going so far as to match Android to cheap Chinese built hardware.
One day we may see a truly open end-user Android phone, like the developer phone, where the end user can upgrade their choice of Android OS derivative according to their exact needs. This might create a very flexible operating system but at the same time might create some problems of API fragmentation.
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