Google Andriod

Wahey! This is the pot of gold at the end of the Google-phone rumour-rainbow. The Open Handset Alliance have released the first API and SDK for the Andriod platform.

Android is an Open Source mobile phone platform based on a Linux kernel and written under an Apache 2.0 licence. The OHA is led by Google and includes members such as HTC, China Mobile and other huge players in the mobile market.

First impressions are good. The SDK includes an emulated handset running the operating system and tools for creating your own Java based applications that take advantage of the proposed hardware.

The emulation looks good, including basic phone software but strangely no messaging support yet (SMS/MMS/e-mail). It does however have a Google Maps application and some developer demos and tools.

Overall the GUI has the simplicity of design that Google tend toward, though not quite so much as Apple does with the iPhone. We must however remember that this is a first developer preview release. It's unusually slick for a version zero Open Source project, but then I'm sure Google has been pumping cash in to get this party started.

Anyway, this could be the next big thing, so I'm off to try creating an application for it...