Android Live Demo
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.
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.
Q. [Apple are planning on playing a central role in distributing iPhone apps] Do you see yourselves playing a similar role?
A. I don’t think there’ll be any one place for [distribution of Android software]. We’ll provide infrastructure to allow application developers to easily get distribution and post whatever business model they have in mind. Some developers just want to give stuff away for free, some developers want to allow you to try something before you buy it, maybe a demo version they give away for free, then try to upsell you to a different version. The infrastructure will be similar to how YouTube works, just a repository that things get hosted on and the technology that lets you put that on a handset.
Q. Geographically, are there regions that are more interested in Android or that you feel will help push it forward faster.
A. It’s been limited right now to the planet Earth! We have a lot of interest - it’s a global interest. We’ve done a lot of things to make sure that in the development of this effort with the 34 partners of the OHA that everyone was represented
, we weren’t drawing any maps and saying “this is going to go this way, this is going to go that way”. It’s really a collaborative effort, development is collaborative.
Q. Could you talk a little bit about why you’ve chosen to keep it in-house up until this point, and then once you do open it up, how much will be open and what specifically will be closed, and what those closed parts might mean for developers.
A. There are different types of open-source projects. There’s the type where a bunch of people get together from ground zero and say “we’re going to create an open-something”; it’s loosely coupled, it’s normally not a corporate entity sponsoring it, it’s a bunch of individuals. They grow it very organically and becomes something big, it takes a long time: that organic nature is rather unstructured. Some argue that that’s a benefit, that it’s a period of incubation, that’s a very interesting time. We think that there’s a window in the mobile industry where it’s very important that there’s a platform that’s open, that’s truly open. That’s why we gathered the 34 members of the OHA to together create this thing, a little more structured than the organic model, and then open source it when it’s reached critical mass, and that’s what we’d call 1.0. When the handset is capable of running the platform, and the consumer is happy with the experience, that’s what we call critical mass. So the other question is related to licencing - do you pick the licence where you insist to the community that they contribute back their intellectual property right. So it’s taking the position that, let’s create this collaboratively, but let’s not dictate business models or whether you have to give back your source code, so that’s why we chose the Apache licence. The apache licence is, essentially, you can use the software, you can use the copyright to create whatever you want, you can use pieces of it, you don’t have to contribute your modifications - we encourage you to, it would be great if you did, I think this whole open-source thing is going to catch on. There is open-source community contributions that we use in the stack, for example Linux which Android is built upon, but it’s pretty much everything you need to build a phone will be open-source. The only things that won’t be are some specific applications for Google services where the services themselves haven’t been opened up. And that’s just a roadmap thing, we’re on a mission to open up as many of our backend services as possible.
Q. Do you envisage the carriers permitting people to be free with their phone, to install software? Does that pose problems with management and reliability as we have with PCs these days?
A. Why wouldn’t the carrier want to allow any application to be put on a cellphone? So far they’ve not had a platform robust enough to give them a feeling of security, and I choose that word purposefully. The platforms today, a lot of them are 20 years old. There’s a lot of legacy, and security wasn’t considered then. Now, here we are in the internet generation, and things come to you - that didn’t happen - when you build a platform from a clean state you have a chance to think about those things, think about what’s going to give the industry, whether an OEM or a carrier, a safety net should malware be produced for these handsets. It’s a platform that will enable the carriers to do more innovative things with their services.
Q. Will they?
A. I hope they do!
Q. [What about MultiTouch?]
A. It’s typically a hardware function, and the handset that was demonstrated didn’t have a MultiTouch sensor.
Q. Does the software support it?
A. The software doesn’t need to support it, you don’t need to go out of your way to support any particular hardware sensor. When that hardware developer puts that [MultiTouch] sensor in their handset, I’m hoping the hardware developer will go out of their way to develop the driver.
Remember, you can see all of our Android demo videos here. Vincent is now off to hopefully spend some hands-on time with the prototype, so keep reading Android Community for more Google IO coverage!