Android has landed. And it looks like, well, some sort of space alien.
Several companies at this week’s Mobile World Congress unveiled prototypes of Android, Google’s highly anticipated, open-source operating system. But rather than showing off sleek, sexy cell phones, with a super-fast OS running groundbreaking applications, attendees were treated to reality.
Android, for now, is mostly a bunch of circuit boards, displays, solder, prototype “phones”, and “alpha” applications intended to show the mobile world that yes, in fact, Android and the so-called Gphones do exist and, to some degree, work. They’re not vaporware.
“It’s not fair to laugh at the huge circuit boards: These are design prototypes and will of course be shrunk down to a fraction of this size,” Charlie Sorrel writes for the Wired’s gadget lab.
“But despite the fugly appearance, these Android phones are the buzz of the show. At the NEC booth, the guy pointed me straight past the other boards saying, ‘This one is the Android. That’s the only one anybody is interested in.’”
So, without further ado, here’s Android in all its, uh, splendor.
Continue reading »