First Google Android phone to debut next week?
640522
The first mobile phone to incorporate Google's open-source Android platform will debut at next week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, a source close to British chipmaker ARM Holdings has told Reuters.According to the source, ARM, a U.K.-based company that makes embedded and graphics processors, as well as processors for mobile devices such as cell phones and PDAs, will introduce a prototype for a telephone that uses Android as its operating platform as soon as next Monday.Google and its partners in the Open Handset Alliance unveiled their open source Android platform last November with the goal of spurring third-party developers to create new and innovative applications for mobile devices.ARM's rumored Android phone is notable because the company is not a member of the Open Handset Alliance, the 34-member multinational group that's dedicated to promoting Android. Other OHA members, such as T-Mobile and Sprint Nextel, have already announced that they plan on releasing Android-based handsets later this year.Although neither Google nor ARM would comment on the rumored Android phone, ARM did post an announcement on its Web site saying it planned to "showcase visually stunning mobile Internet devices" at the Mobile World Congress next week that will deliver a "full web in your pocket" experience. The company also says it will be giving demonstrations of other ARM-powered phones such as the LG-KS20 and the Samsung BlackJack II.?
69610
Not paranoid about Android Caravan World Congress Google Android phones aren't even on vapourware yet, but already Symbian is already welcoming the challenge.â¦
25897
Research in Motion has announced its latest BlackBerry phone, aka the BlackBerry 7100t.ï¿½ The phone isnât due to ship until October and test units are just getting into reviewersâ hands (Iâm waiting for mine right now.
695517
Google search will be added first to new Nokia multimedia phones, then roll out to other handsets.
287112
Blog: Denim company makes announcement in Paris this week; new phone to come in five color models and will ship with vintage-style watch chain.
462194
Analysts take guesses on how the Google phone will operate.
699129
Google Inc.'s hotly anticipated share listing appears set to launch as early as Wednesday.
652961
Details of Palm Inc.'s new smart phone are emerging ahead of the product's launch tomorrow.
333201
Android, the open-source mobile platform from Google, has received substantial attention at this week's World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, Spain, where some prototype handsets were shown. And on Wednesday, developers focused on the release of an updated Software Development Kit (SDK) for Android.
54450
Google&#39;s Android software platform for mobile phones&#160;is coming to life in Barcelona with a number of chip manufacturers showing it running on prototype or proof-of-concept phones at the Mobile World Congress on Monday.Freescale, Marvell, NEC Electronics, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments all had Android on show. Most of them expect to see Android phones based on their chips on the market in the second half of this year.The hardware ranged from bulky development boards with daughter cards sticking out at unlikely angles to more compact devices small enough to slip into your pocket. All were built around chips containing processor cores designed by Arm, a British fabless semiconductor company.One of the most polished prototypes is on the Texas Instruments stand -- although TI representatives insisted that it&#39;s just an example of how a finished product could look as the company only makes chips, leaving the development of phones to its customers. &quot;We don&#39;t do plastic,&quot; one said.TI actually had Android running on two different devices. One was based on its OMAP850, a single-chip device containing an application processor for Android and a baseband processor for controlling the phone&#39;s radio interface. The other contained TI&#39;s OMAP3430 multimedia application processor, capable of decoding high-definition television signals at a resolution of 720p. It requires a separate baseband processor, and is designed for high-end multimedia phones.Developing software for a new phone typically takes 14 to 18 months, said Ramesh Iyer, mobile Internet device product manager at TI. &quot;Android cuts that dramatically. It&#39;s a disruptor,&quot; he said.Google is shaking the market in other ways, Iyer said. &quot;Android is a single stack. You don&#39;t have to go looking for third-party solutions. Suddenly, they have defragmented the whole Linux ecosystem into one building block,&quot; he said.Android is entering an already crowded market for mobile phone software: To see how crowded, you only had to look at the NEC stand, where four prototypes containing its Medity2 processor were packed onto a narrow table. One was running Symbian OS, one Windows Mobile, one Android on top of Wind River Linux, and the last was running the same Wind River Linux but with a different application layer based on software from Trolltech and Esmertec.NEC staff expressed surprise at the level of interest in Android, saying they expected more attention for the completed phones based on the Medity2 at the next table. Manufactured for NTT DoCoMo, those phones contained the version of Linux promoted by the LiMo Foundation.The two systems are not necessarily in competition, though. With Android&#39;s focus on the application layer and Limo&#39;s work on the middleware, the underlying services needed to link applications to the Linux kernel, the two can be complementary, NEC staff said.Marvell took the prize for the most secretive Android demonstrations, refusing to allow photographs and declining even to say on which of its communications processors the software was running. The company showed a compact handset running the Android interface with a bare minimum of applications and a more complete installation playing video and browsing the Web on a bulky development board. Shrinking that down to a pocket-sized device will not take long, staff said. In fact, they had one ready -- just not loaded with the Android software.Android&#39;s Linux roots are likely to encourage the development of a wave of new handset applications, said Marvell&#39;s marketing director Vish Deshmane.&quot;You will see a lot more software to run on devices from people who want to exploit the commonality with desktop systems. It&#39;s going to be a boon for the 3G world because more applications means more data traffic, so operators will be happy,&quot; he said.Over at Freescale Semiconductor, staff showed Google Maps zooming in on the center of Barcelona on a development board built around Freescale&#39;s i.MX31 processor. This processor is not intended for mobile phones at all, and is more at home in GPS&#160;terminals or media players such as Toshiba&#39;s Gigabit and Microsoft&#39;s Zune.Qualcomm&#39;s demonstration of its 7201 combined baseband and application processor sparkled, but did not exploit the chip&#39;s full potential. The spinning globe of Android&#39;s Global Time application turned smoothly even without the assistance of the 3D graphics hardware acceleration, for which the drivers are not yet ready, said Rob Woodford.Android phones based on the chip will go on sale in the second half of this year, Woodford said -- but U.S. readers should contain their excitement: the Qualcomm display was overshadowed by a card warning that&#160;it may be prohibited from shipping the products on show to the U.S.&#160;because of a Dec. 31 court injunction obtained by chip rival Broadcom in a patent infringement case.The Mobile World Congress runs through Thursday at the Fira de Barcelona showground.
590515
By CHRIS BLACKHURST AS I WRITE this, mid-morning, I check. I've already used Google more than 10 times today. Is there any other product quite like it, anything so ubiquitous, so taken for granted? There's the phone, but I can switch the network. Petrol? I never bother with the brand.
610032
Google Inc expects a number of  companies to demonstrate prototype devices using its much  anticipated Android mobile operating system at the world's  biggest wireless fair next week, a spokesman said on Friday.
542477
ARM will demonstrate&#160;Google&#39;s Android&#160;on an early prototype device at&#160;Mobile World Congress&#160;in Barcelona next week, one of several demonstrations of the mobile platform that will occur at the conference, Google said Thursday.ARM spokesman Stuart Gill confirmed in an interview that ARM would be conducting the demonstration of the Android platform, but refused to elaborate.&quot;ARM will be demonstrating Android on an early prototype device to show how the platform works on their processor,&quot; Google spokesman Barry Schnitt said in an e-mail. &quot;There are a number of other companies that will be demonstrating Android on their hardware in various forms at Mobile World Congress.&quot; He would not name the others, however.Schnitt added that Google was &quot;very excited about the momentum building behind the platform as demonstrated by the number of companies that are supporting it with their technology.&quot;Google also released&#160;a link to a video&#160;showing the early prototype device.It is logical for ARM to be developing in the Android area, since it designs Linux-based CPUs for mobile phones, as well as CPUs based on other types of operating systems. ARM is the predominant CPU platform for mobile phones globally, said Jack Gold, an analyst at J. Gold Associates in Northboro, Mass.Since ARM is already building with Linux, it would not be difficult for the company to put Android on top of the Linux in a phone, Gold said. He said ARM might be doing the Android development on behalf of another company, perhaps a device manufacturer.ARM, however, is not listed as one of the founders of the&#160;Open Handset Alliance,&#160;which was led by Google and includes more than 30 companies.Gold said he would expect several manufacturers to show prototypes of phones or handheld devices in Barcelona, either in private suites or on the show floor. Motorola, HTC, LG Electronics, Motorola, and Samsung Electronics all make phones and are part of the OHA, he noted.HTC and T-Mobile also are planning to offer phones based on open-source Android this year, the companies have said.For Gold and others, the real question is not whether companies can show off products, but whether they will work. &quot;Anybody can show a phone, but how rock solid will it be?&quot; he asked. He expects demonstrations by half a dozen companies of Android devices before July, with phones shipping by year end.A report that surfaced earlier this said&#160;Dell and Google would also show an Android phone&#160;in Barcelona next week. But that report was quickly&#160;refuted by bloggers&#160;and others.One industry insider, who asked not to be identified, said it was unlikely Dell would produce an Android phone partly because it is not in the OHA. But neither is ARM and could be working from the Android developer&#39;s kit, or with another vendor, the analyst noted.Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.&#160;
467211
The British chipmaker will show off the early version of a phone based on Google's new Android mobile operating system at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Monday.
360619
Google Inc  is expected to  announce advanced software and services enabling handset makers  to bring Google-powered phones to market by mid-2008, the Wall  Street Journal reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with  the matter.
357509
Preloaded with maps of North America and eastern and western Europe, the N&uuml;vifone will be Garmin's first device to include Google Local Search.
591181
Internet search giant Google unveils software it hopes will power a variety of future mobile phone handsets.