Google Android - The Android Log

Q: What does Android look like?

A: Google has stepped up on behalf of the alliance to do various components of the support from a developer community perspective. We have a user interface team continuing development on the UI, and there will actually be a replacement UI.

We’ve been building it as a mobile mashup platform. That is a new concept for [mobile] phones. So the developer can now stand on the system platform and take advantage of other developers’ work for the first time. So, that just creates more flexibility for the developers, less work, faster turnaround, rapid prototyping, and all that stuff, and we’re really, really excited about that concept.

Q: Is there a prototype dubbed Dream? Who has it, and when are we going to see it?

A: I actually don’t know where that name come from. That’s been an internal code-name that’s been kicked around here, but it changes quite constantly.

We have manufacturing partners in the alliance, and they’re building products, and Google has been given some of those devices. As part of the SDK, there’s a complete hardware emulator that runs on the PC. It runs on Mac, Windows and Linux. It’s literally a hardware emulator of various devices — you know, different screen formats: horizontal, landscape, or portrait and, with the Qwerty keyboard and without a Qwerty keyboard; with touch, without touch.

Even IT leaders who are not gadget lovers had better understand the implications of Google’s recently unveiled “gPhone”—which turns out not to be one phone but a software platform called Android. And Google hopes it will power many, many phones.

“If CIOs are not planning for mobility now, they better start,” says Bill Hughes, principal analyst with market research firm In-Stat.

Consider the changes in 2007 alone, both for the mobile phone industry and the IT workers who support corporate smartphones and other mobile devices.