14 DAY TRIAL // Google unveiled yesterday the true face of its upcoming Android platform, plus several details regarding what seems to be HTC Dream. The unveiling took place in San Francisco, during Google I/O, said to be the company's "largest developer event".
Thanks to Android Community, several videos and images have been posted on the Web, showing us that Google's next mobile platform is really something to look forward to.
First of all, Android is a fully customizable interface - it's an open-source platform, hence users will have the freedom to customize and change it however they want. Furthermore, we have Google Maps (2D or 3D), Google Street View, a pre-installed Pacman game, plus a WebKit browser with lots of cool features, including some sort of magnifier that enables users to easily zoom in or out in any area of a Web page. An overview of Adnroid can be seen in the videos posted below.
The phone used to showcase Android's abilities is not confirmed to be HTC Dream, as Google signed a non-disclosure agreement with its manufacturer. However, the handset has lots of chances to be the Dream, since Dream is the first device announced to hit the market with Android on board. Either way, the handset showcased by Google has the following features: a wide display (touch-enabled, obviously, and probably larger than 3 inches), 3G/HSDPA for data transfer speeds of up to 3.6 Mbps, 128MB of RAM, 256MB of ROM and a Qualcomm processor at 528 MHz.
Although Android's demonstration was made on a full touchscreen handset, the platform is not exclusively made for them and it will also work on other kinds of devices, including trackball and D-Pad phones. Even more, it seems that Android can even work on devices that don't have a display at all, but there are no further details about this so we can't actually say what it means.
An exact date for its availability was not yet given, but it's certain that Google will release it by the end of the year, at the same time with HTC Dream. We'll see then if the device presented now is indeed the Dream or just a prototype used for tests.
Android overview:
Android running Google Street View:
Android and Google Maps:
Android and Pacman: