Android 3.0 “Honeycomb” … How awesome is this?

CES 2011 Android Wishes and Predictions

Tomorrow is Christmas and all I can think about is all the new stuff I’m going to have to keep track of at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in the first week of January. It’s going to be my fifth year in attendance as a professional journalist, and the previous years I’ve gone are starting to blend together in my mind. Fortunately, I can gauge the year in history by the amount of Android stuff I see there. Two years ago, there was only the smallest bit of Android-based stuff because the first open source version of the OS was only just released. Last year, the presence had increased significantly, and I saw a lot of new smartphones, a couple of e-reader/tablets and a couple of strange and unique contributions like desktop video phones and Android-powered Microwaves.

This year, aside from the Verizon LTE Android phone that we’re expecting, everyone thinks CES 2011 is going to be all about tablets.

I have my reservations about that prediction.

Yes, Motorola is undoubtedly revealing an Android tablet of some sort, and LG, NEC and Dell have all said they will be showing something off too…but other than that the field is pretty wide open.

Speaking of LG though, there’s a company who’s in the Android space way less than it should be. Last year I saw two Android phones from LG, and earlier this year the company pledged more presence in the area, but frankly I was highly unimpressed with its smartphone attempts. Many of the phones LG showed off last year were solidly based in the pre-iPhone, post BlackBerry design ethic. The company’s got a lot of clout in consumer electronics, but last year it looked to be focused solidly on its TV sector, maybe a tablet would kickstart interest in their smartphones.

A ton of Android-based tablets pour out of China every day. I mean, just check out dealextreme and you’ll be treated to a new piece of shit $99 plastic tablet running Android 2.2 every day of the week. I really hope predictions for CES 2011 will be proven wrong and that there will be something to take my breath away, because I want to see how far companies have taken Android out of its comfortable niche of portable/pocketable touchscreen devices.

Specifically, I want to see OTHER devices running it, like point and shoot cameras, pocket camcorders, media players, clocks and watches, game systems, in-car systems, DVD players and TVs, set top boxes, digital toys, and home automation gadgets.

Frankly, after hearing that Samsung is on track to sell 10 million Galaxy S smartphones before this year is even out, I’ve accepted that Android is now the mainstream smartphone OS. It has reached the average user who upgrades his phone only when his contract runs out, and my efforts will be best invested in tracking the smartphone market overall, and the specific unique applications of Android’s open source branch.

Do I smell Gingerbread?

Well, the rumors are coming in, and they’re not exactly the most positive things. As usual, people are throwing around the same tired-ass fragmentation argument.

Rumor 1.) Android 3.0 (Gingerbread) is due in mid-October, with the first handsets shipping in the Nov/Dec range for the holidays (which sounds like a revisitation of 2.0)
Rumor 2.) Minimum hardware requirements for Android 3.0 devices are: 1GHZ CPU, 512MB or RAM, displays from 3.5″ and higher.
Rumor 3.) A New 1280×760 resolution is available for the devices with displays of 4″ and higher (I keep screaming “convergence,” but I don’t know if anybody is listening…)
Rumor 4.) Completely new 3D-esque UI. This one seems almost logical. Hopefully you will be able to turn off all animations.
Rumor 5.) 3.0 will be for high end devices, and lower-end handsets will keep Android 2.1/2.2

iPhone Bashing

Tim Bray has joined the Android team at Google, so get used to him speaking for the platform.

The 55 year old co-creator of the XML standard left Sun and picked up at Google this week, and explained in his blog some of the reasons why he chose Google over a company like Apple.

In short, he thinks Android is the place to be, and had this to say about the iPhone:

“The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet’s future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. It’s a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord’s pleasure and fear his anger.

I hate it.

I hate it even though the iPhone hardware and software are great, because freedom’s not just another word for anything, nor is it an optional ingredient.

The big thing about the Web isn’t the technology, it’s that it’s the first-ever platform without a vendor (credit for first pointing this out goes to Dave Winer). From that follows almost everything that matters, and it matters a lot now, to a huge number of people. It’s the only kind of platform I want to help build.

Apple apparently thinks you can have the benefits of the Internet while at the same time controlling what programs can be run and what parts of the stack can be accessed and what developers can say to each other.

I think they’re wrong and see this job as a chance to help prove it.

The tragedy is that Apple builds some great open platforms; I’ve been a happy buyer of their computing systems for some years now and, despite my current irritation, will probably go on using them.”

I don’t think I’m alone in giving this a big round of applause.

“Sterile” …what a good word to describe iPhone.

I too am a daily Mac user who has absolutely no interest in the iPhone. It’s simply not exciting (the goddamn iPad just serves to remind me how boring the platform is) despite the elegant hardware and snappy interface. It’s so uniform and uninspiring and STERILE. Nobody goes “Wow, is that an iPhone?” anymore. Nobody. Because once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all, and they’ve been the same for three years now.

My peer group is increasingly being overtaken by Android devices, and any time someone pulls out their phone, there’s a conversation between them about different facets of the platform, UIs, apps, and future developments. It’s a more inclusive environment not only to OEMs and developers, but also to users.

It’s funny that ZDNet’s Dana Blankenhorn said “This beat is about to get a lot more fun” now that Tim Bray is involved, because I always thought it was the most exciting area in all of mobile technology.

Maybe it just takes someone of his stature to make people believe it.

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.

Day one of Android Bakery v.1.0

Hey everybody!  My name is Tim Conneally and this is Android Bakery, a place where we’ll look at the exciting new developments in Google’s mobile operating system:  the hardware, the apps, and the lifestyle.

I chose the blog format because I’d like to write without having to limit my bias or tendency to think aloud.  So for the first post in Android Bakery before we delve into any awesomeness, I will provide a full disclosure.

I am primarily a writer for Betanews.com, a developer and co-founder of Baltimore-based event mapping site Localist.com and stockholder in several wireless infrastructure and software companies:  specifically Motorola, Alcatel-Lucent, and Nuance Communications.

I am a huge fan of Google and its services, so that’s why I got into Android even before the G1 was released.  Since it’s been out, I’ve followed a number of burgeoning software companies as they’ve helped the platform grow, and I really love to watch the ecosystem change as it fulfills the demands of the mobile user.

My primary goal for this site is to have a single post per day:  a review of  an Android App released that day, a video of me flipping out about something, or an interview with software developers.

If you enjoy Android as much as I do, I’d love to hear from you, and I’ll have my first real post later tonight.