Android 2.0 features unveiled!

Today, Android SDK Tech lead Xavier Ducrohet announced Android 2.0 support in the SDK, which unveils some of the big capabilities in the latest version of Android, expected to hit the market soon on at least one of Verizon’s upcoming “Droid” devices. In the developer video posted today, for instance, all the new features were shown off on a device connected to the Verizon network, and the release notes say it will be deployable in November.

The keyword with Eclair is interoperability.

Motorola recently launched its custom Android build with a UI called MotoBLUR, the central function of which is the ability to integrate with a user’s many social web services from a single interface. The new APIs included in Eclair give this communicative function to all developers. So with the new Account Manager API, developers can centrally store account credentials on the device, the Contacts application can now sync and aggregate contact data from multiple accounts, and the Sync Adaptors API provides full two-way contact sync with ANY backend.

To provide a single, unified face for this data, the Quick Contact function has been added. By clicking on a contact’s picture, a user can pull up a menu of all the different ways to reach that contact…Gmail, Email, IM, Phone, and the various Social networks. It’s like the existent “live folder” concept for contacts, but brought together under the standard contact list, or in any app the developer chooses.

Android 2.0 also updates the Bluetooth API so apps can now access Bluetooth controls to discover, connect and share information with nearby devices, which unlocks the ability to make peer-to-peer and proximity-based applications.

The built-in Android browser has been updated with a refreshed UI with an actionable address bar, bookmarks sorted by thumbnail, double-tap zoom command, and HTML5 support, which opens up Application cache, client-side SQL databases, geolocation API support, and fullscreen video tag support.

The camera app has again been tweaked, but this time it includes digital zoom (with macro mode), built-in color effects (posterize, solarize, etc) and built-in flash support.

It even adds Exchange Support and includes Multi-touch support for the soft keyboard.

Throw this out there with the upcoming availability of Verizon Droids, the Sony Racheal, and whatever else is coming out, and we’ve got a really huge quarter for Android. I’m gonna start doing video blogs soon, it just takes a bit longer to write and record them.

A thought-provoking view of Android from Symbian

GigaOM struck gold with a video of Symbian’s Lee Williams criticizing Google for poisoning the well with its Android business model. It’s an absolute must-watch.
Here’s the meat of it, taken as a direct quote:

“First and foremost, the goal of a Google system would be to create a situation where you have information about the user and the use of…those cloud apps that are proprietary to Google. Secondarily, it would be to cookie them, so you get that unique identifier association with the data you’ve collected on the individual’s habits and routines, etc, so you can target apps toward them, so you can build more intelligent cloud-based apps for them and so forth. At the end of the day, what is the motivation for any other company in an Android ecosystem when in fact the consumers are being taken right away from them just in some of these simple concepts?”

“Android is building almost the perfect storm of fragmentation in a large marketplace, I don’t know how many different UIs are shipping and how many people claim to own them across the 18 devices in development. More than that, they continue to do the revenue share deals with the operators and leverage the benefit of these cookied consumers…how many different UIs and closed APIs you’re gonna end up with in that scenario becomes a very big question on how do you sustain and return on investments in that type of environment?”

“I don’t hate Android at all, I think it’s a great initiative. But what I think Google should do is come be a member of the Symbian Foundation and join a truly open ecosystem where anybody can come and sit on a council seat and determine the future of that system, instead of advertising that they have one and going in their own direction.”

…I stripped out the part where he calls Apple greedy and Google evil. That was a bit of a “sweeps week” comment, but Williams’ comment is nonetheless very interesting because he’s cutting Google down for building an open ecosystem that has a closed monetization scheme.

Then, talking about his relationship with handset makers like Samsung, HTC and Motorola, Williams said companies have come to him and said “…One of the issues I’ve got is that Google is taking my interface with my consumers away.”

Let’s see if I have this right…Google gives you the open source framework and shares the revenue and all it costs you is the user’s behavioral data? And in exchange, users get high-quality services for free?

What’s the problem, exactly?

I’m sure my view is oversimplifying it, and my knowledge of Symbian’s inner workings is poor. However, I do know that it’s very easy for a nonprofit organization to vilify a group that is working for profit as “greedy” or “evil,” especially when their customers are the exact same companies.

I guess that’s why he extended the invitation to join the foundation instead of a big old fuck off.

Aren’t you glad you’re an Android early adopter?

If there’s one thing that Android Bakery is about, it’s giant foam pastries being dropped on Google’s lawn, and apparently the customary giant eclair has made its grand debut.

I’m going to make two predictions, one a longshot, one more logical.

Here are the factors adding up:

1.) Verizon’s Getting an Android phone (and we now know Eric Schmidt’s boner for Verizon)

2.) At the Google earnings call late in the day today, Eric Schmidt says, “Android adoption is about to explode.”

3.) …on the same day the giant Eclair lands?

Prediction one (longshot) Verizon is getting the first Android 2.0 phone.

I mean, they only released the Donut SDK last month…and we first heard about that in May. BUT if you remember, as I’m sure you do, they showed off all the Donut features at Google I/O not even one month after the big foam Cupcake dropped and all our G1s updated.

It’s too early in Android’s lifespan to be able to predict these kind of trends, but dropping a comically huge representation of the OS’s codename is about as obvious a hint as you could hope to receive. Something with Eclair is going to happen very soon.

What sucks is that we don’t know anything about Eclair, really. So that leads me to my second, and probably more likely prediction:

Verizon and AT&T will be getting their Android phones at the same time as Sprint and T-Mobile gets their new devices, summarily “exploding” the OS onto all United States carriers with four new devices…then after the five minutes of pants-pooping is over, and tons of new Android users are born, we’ll get to see an early build of Eclair to tease the new users with sick new upcoming features.

Also, Michael Arrington commented on the article I linked to above, saying he’s seen a new Android device that’ll “blow everyone away.” (I could have the quote wrong, but that’s the gist of it.) I’m hoping it’s Rachael from Sony Ericsson, because that looks really hot. But hell, it could be something even better.

All of this, combined with the daily media coverage making the “duh!” prediction that Android is on its way to market domination make it a very good time to be an Android early adopter, and everyone who’s going through the 528MHz generation right now has my personal permission to refer to himself as an “O.G.”

…or something less dorky.

140 characters about every Android handset thus far.

More Android Phones keep comin’, so here’s a rundown of what we’ve got in the immortal language of Twitter. I’m going to keep updating this post as more devices come out, so #havenofear. After updating this a number of times, I’ve decided to organize this list by phones that have been released or announced first, then followed by rumored devices.

RELEASED/CONFIRMED:

@HTCDream, @TmobileG1 This is the phone that started it all one year ago: Keyboard, Chin, Trackball, Slider, and Android 1.0

@SamsungGalaxy, @I7500, typical Samsung quality display, all-touch AMOLED with light sensor, not a “Google phone,” avail in Germany, Austria, Poland

@HTCMagic, @Mytouch3G, @Dopod, It’s still got the chin, but no keyboard. Shellable, skinnable, endorsed by Whoopi.

@HTCHero (World) Slim and sexy, this is the first ‘droid with a custom UI #HTCSense The CDMA version is Sprint’s first Android device.

@HTCTattoo yet another all-touch device with #HTCSense bound for Europe. Mysteriously ditched the “chin” but went with custom shells.

@HTCDroidEris, @HTCDesire Launch partner of Verizon Droid, standard 528MHz CPU, very similar to the Hero

@HTCNexusOne  Sold directly through Google, all-touch, snapdragon, very controversial.

@MotorolaCliq, @MotorolaDext first Android phone from Moto, features #MotoBLUR, second big UI for droid. Surefire Sidekick replacement.

@MotorolaDroid aka @sholes aka @tao aka @touchstone. QWERTY slider as thin as an iPhone. #VZW’s first Android and first Android 2.0 (eclair) device. A killer.

@MotorolaBackflip, aka @Enzo, a weird form factor with keyboard on back of chassis and trackpad behind the screen, also rocks #motoBLUR

@TmobilePulse, #Huawei makes this, the first prepaid all-touch Android device “perfect entry level smartphone”

@LG GW620, @LGEtna this QWERTY slider was launched in EU, turned up unlocked in France €450. lacks d-pad/trackball but has arrow keys.

@LG GT540, don’t know the name of this one, but is all-touch, runs 2.0, and comes in various colours. Launched at CES, coming to EU/Asia

@AcerA1, @AcerLiquid, like #Moto, #Acer said it’s focusing on Android now. Launched UK 10/14, runs Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset.

@Dellmini3i, one of #ChinaMobile’s first Ophones, rumored to be AT&T’s first Android phone, we’ll have more. Dell is good with staying in touch.

@LenovoO1, another TD-SCDMA Ophone for China. Pretty, but not likely to come to the U.S.

@SamsungBehold2, shown with #TouchWiz #Cube UI, will be first Samsung droid phone in US on T-Mobile

@SamsungMoment, thought to be the #InstinctQ, this 800Mhz QWERTY monster is headed for Sprint in Nov.

@SamsungGalaxySpica @I5700, 800MHz CPU, 3.2-inch HVGA, a 3mpix cam, 180MB internal memory. Actually quite dull. Announced on Nov 16.

@GeeksPhoneONE QWERTY slider available in EU (Spain) in December “extremadamente ágil y eficiente!”

@SaygusV1 Their V1 has 2-way video calling and is a huge, heavy monster of a phone

@SonyEricsson Xperia X10, comes with slick UI and new “UX Platform,” powered by Snapdragon. SE is forgoing the Android praise and just sticking with making phones.

UNCONFIRMED:

@MotorolaDevour aka @Calgary…the name has shown up for 2 years, and only recently has any actual evidence shown up.  We’ll see at CES!

@MotorolaHeron or @IronMan This Windows Mobile phone was pulled from AT&T, listed as “specifications subject to change due to move to Android.” Whereabouts unknown.

@MotorolaZeppelin Spotted in China in a regulatory filing, with not much known besides 5Mpx camera, and HDMI output

@MotorolaOpusOne – Supposed to be the first iDen Android Device, to ship with 1.5, 3.1″ screen, 3 megapixel cam—looking cheap

@TMobile “Tap” shown on the Samsung Behold II launch paper…possibly a #ZTE device?

@INQ committed to an Android device, but we haven’t seen anything yet.

Android/Google backlash? Calm down.

I’m coming from a casual/moderate open source user’s perspective with a question:

Are all serious FOSS advocates high strung ninnies?

In my career as a journalist, I’ve encountered more haywire open source reactionaries than I’d like to deal with, and I’ve really begun to regard the whole group as a bunch of paranoid freaks.

There’s this ideology that turns into a stouthearted set of beliefs that gets in the way of logical discourse. I liken it to political radicals who call everyone who isn’t throwing molotov cocktails at the police a “fascist sympathizer.”

What am I talking about here? If you’re an Android fan, you know Cyanogen. It’s a modded Android ROM which has basically been feeding the public all of Google’s software updates before Google has had a chance to officially release them to the public. Google has finally issued a cease and desist warning to Cyanogen’s developer –also going by the moniker Cyanogen– that he has to cut it out because he’s distributing stuff not included in the open source licensing. As Google said yesterday in its blog, “Unauthorized distribution of this software harms us just like it would any other business, even if it’s done with the best of intentions.”

Suddenly the open source reactionaries cry foul and mobilize a boycott of Android. To quote Phandroid’s article yesterday: “Google is basically moving the modding community from doing their work in the light to doing their work in the dark. Forget about getting ROMs on XDA-DEVS… Android builds are about to become torrents and warez.”

*sigh*

Can we please be civilized? I mean, you shouldn’t be surprised, Android has never been purely open source. Since it was first released last October, it has been a kind of hybrid licensing structure. There is the public development branch under the Apache 2.0 license and then stuff which is considered Google’s intellectual property which must be licensed out… I don’t know how minute the stuff that must be licensed is, and judging by the confusion of the community, the two may be too closely interwoven for many to discern where one ends and the other begins.

One commenter wrote: “The phones that are running Cyanogen’s ROMs ALREADY HAD THE GOOGLE APPS.”

However true this may have been in the past, in this case it is abundantly clear what the problem is. Cyanogen included the updated Android Market in his mod, which is fundamentally different from the app already on everybody’s phones, clearly crossing the line. In other words, the C&D is about Cyanogen distributing a closed-source app and not modding the Android platform.

What the community is getting upset over is that just because Google releases a free Android app, it does not mean it’s Free and Open Source. I’ve seen this throughout the message board commentary over the last few days. People assume that because YouTube, Gmail, Google Sync are not FOSS, that Android is now completely ruined.

The modding community is pissed because they now think this means they have access to basically none of Google’s awesome services, and HTC Sense and Motorola’s MOTOBLUR are illegal, and now they’re all abandoning the platform as tainted by corporate greed.

Now, I don’t know the ins and outs of the licensing structure, but it’s obvious that this reaction was way out of hand. I suggest we all sit down, pull the black bandannas off our faces and turn the talk about boycotts and protests into talk about what can and cannot be done with Android.

We don’t need Cyanogen to be a martyr for an insurrection.

10+ new Android phones from Motorola in 2010? FALSE.

Being a tech industry analyst has got to be a hell of a job. If you make it to the point where people look forward to hearing what you have to say (the point of punditry, maybe?) you really don’t have to make any huge, Earthshaking predictions. You just use what you know about market trends, developing technologies, and company/leadership personalities, and you won’t sound like a fool…even if you’re not exactly right.

But some analysts aren’t that conservative.

There are also the big game hunters, who go for the big predictions and the big payoff. Unfortunately, the more big predictions you miss, the more you need to make to get your reputation back up.

Last week, Trip Chowdry of Global Equities Research predicted that Motorola will release at least 10 new Android phones in 2010, priced between $39 and $399.

I saw this prediction, and I instantly got the “do you believe this guy?” look on my face, with palms upflipped and a half smile against a scowling brow…the Andrew Dice Clay look.

No disrespect meant, but Chowdry doesn’t exactly have the best record for big predictions. In May, he predicted that the Palm Foleo would make a comeback. In January, He predicted that Costco would sell $149 iPhones. In 2007, he even predicted that Google would “lose its technological edge” to a semantic search startup called Powerset (which was bought by Microsoft in 2008.)

Track record aside, a lineup with “at least” 10 Android phones is an insane prediction, and here’s my reason, using some simple reasoning instead of what appears to be bombastic inference.

Premise A.) Motorola averages between 26-30 handsets a year.

Premise B.) Android is a smartphone OS.

Premise C.) Motorola’s best-selling handsets are not smartphones.

Conclusion– Motorola is not going to have a lineup made up of more than 30% smartphones, especially when 72% of all phones sold are feature phones.

Yes, Motorola has said it will be shifting its focus from feature phones onto smartphones, and it has said it will put Android at the heart of that, but a launch of more than ten devices on Android in one year would not only be an unprecedented shift, but totally bonkers. I’m not saying I don’t think it will happen eventually, but Motorola has gone through literally dozens of different OSes in its history, and this is another instance of past behavior shaping our preception of future behavior.

My six reasons for considering the Cliq

AndroidGuys is a solid site.

Amid the hue and cry of today’s Motorola Android news, they’ve made a post saying “We want to hear what you think of the Motorola Cliq and MOTOBLUR.”

Well, I’ll tell you what attracts me to the Cliq in order of importance:

1.) Glass Screen–the G1′s screen is just too sticky. Glass has just enough friction to feel good, and it totally enhances the touch experience, not to mention adds stability to the entire unit.
2.) Boosted RAM–even though it’s only a minor bump, it’s totally something that will make a noticeable difference in day to day use.
3.) Solid Chassis– This is the only thing I consistently favor about the iPhone, and if this is anywhere in that neighborhood, the Cliq will have improved on all my biggest complaints about the G1.
4.) 3.5mm headphone jack–Self explanatory: I use the MP3 player, DroidLive, Listen, and now Pandora and I DESPISE the usb headset. I will dedicate a rant to this in the near future.
5.) Keyboard–it may not be as powerful as the HTCHero*, but it’s the second ‘droid phone on T-Mobile with a keyboard.
6.) Exclusive UI—Not that I particularly have a need for social networking 24 hours a day, but I am interested in the UI design since it’s been compared to HTC’s Rosie/SenseUI, which I totally dig.

Naturally, I want to handle it before I decide to buy it…but it’s beginning to look like this is what I’ll be picking up in the fall.

It’s not a phone to die for by any stretch, but it certainly would be an improvement over the G1, aside from the move from a trackball to a D-pad, which would only take a matter of time to get used to.

AT&T, the Anti-Android (Aka “Fun with Pie Charts”)

MKM Partners analyst Tero Kuittinen told The Street yesterday that AT&T ditched its plans to carry a Motorola Android phone, referring to the HTC Heron which Motorola originally designed to be a Windows Mobile phone, and then reportedly retracted at the last minute to load up with Android instead.

A lot of pundits have put a lot of weight behind Motorola’s first two Android handsets, saying that this is the company’s “last chance” to recover its phone-producing arm, or some sort of swan song because of the spin-off that was supposed to take place in the third quarter of 2009.

Last October, Co-CEO Sanjay Jha said “While our strategic intent to separate the company remains intact, we are no longer targeting the third quarter of 2009, primarily due to the macro-economic environment, stresses in the financial markets and the changes underway in Mobile Devices.”

Not having support from AT&T is a big detriment, some say, as it’s the only carrier consistently stealing subscribers away from other carriers.

But wait, AT&T didn’t just cock-block Motorola. It’s actually given the big thumbs down to TWO companies offering an Android device. Apparently it pitched HTC’s Lancaster into the dumpster this summer as well, only that time, we don’t know exactly why. Rumors were that it could have been too underpowered or perhaps even too problematic for a successful launch.

Because AT&T is the exclusive iPhone carrier, people often forget that it offers any other smartphones. Maybe they don’t consider any other products noteworthy, I don’t know. But the point is, AT&T’s selection of smartphones is led by Windows Mobile. Check this out:

AT&T's smartphone roster by OS

If you look at these stats as a direct reflection of the U.S. smartphone market as a whole, you’ll notice right away that the OS distribution is kind of out of whack. Yes, AT&T has 70 million subscribers, and that’s an important factor in the availability of an OS…but how much does it really determine market position?

I mean, does Windows Mobile have the lion’s share of the domestic smartphone market because it is the most common OS in AT&T’s smartphones? Of course not: Blackberry does, then iPhone, THEN Windows Mobile.

Let’s assume that on September 10th, T-Mobile and Verizon get Motorola Android phones, and lets see how their charts look.

Here are our friends over at T-Mobile. We know those zany Germans love Android (they got the Samsung Galaxy before anyone else, after all.) However, we see that Android happens to be T-Mobile’s ONLY smartphone OS that isn’t Windows Mobile or Blackberry. It’s probably because they’re too busy gunking up their phone lineup with those silly Sidekicks.

T-Mobile's smartphone OS distribution

And here’s Verizon. As you can see, they’re the most balanced/least diverse smartphone carrier in our list thus far.

Verizon's Smartphones if they get Motorola Sholes

AT&T already offers the most diverse selection of Smartphones, at least by operating system…so maybe it’s not trying to thin the proverbial broth by adding any old mediocre Android device to the pool.

Now, you’re probably going to say “Hold up a second, fancy pants! Where’s the Palm Centro in all this?”

I know right? Check Sprint, they’re the only carrier still offering Palm’s (awesome) gear as of this very moment. While we’re looking at them, you’ll notice that Sprint’s got quite a diverse OS lineup…but that diversity is mostly due to Palm’s multi-platform delivery.

No Android here...yet.

So yes…my point. The carriers we expect to have Android on them also happen to be the ones with the least diverse smartphone selection.

I know there’s only a correlative link between number of OSes and likelihood of new OS adoption (and not a causal one,) so don’t bite my face off for pointing it out.