Google Offering Truly Unlocked G1’s to Developers

Attention aspiring Android developers based in countries like the United States, UK, Germany, Japan, India, Canada, France, Taiwan, and around ten others. You can now get a completely unlocked G1 handset from Google. This means that neither the SIM card nor the hardware is locked down with any restrictions.

For those of you AT&T folk wanting to get your hands on a G1, this is your ticket. All you have to do is pretend that you want to develop an app for Android. There’s just a $25 registration fee on top of that $399 no-contract price T-Mobile offers their customers. Not bad huh?

The Android Dev Phone 1 is a SIM-unlocked and hardware-unlocked device that is designed for advanced developers. The device ships with a system image that is fully compatible with Android 1.0, so you can rely on it when developing your applications. You can use any SIM in the device and can flash custom Android builds that will work with the unlocked bootloader. Unlike the bootloader on retail devices, the bootloader on the Android Dev Phone 1 does not enforce signed system images. The Android Dev Phone 1 should also appeal to developers who live outside of T-Mobile geographies. - Devices for Developers

Just be careful with your new unlocked G1. Because you’ll be able to do essentially anything you want to it, the potential certainly exists for bricking it.

..from AndroidGuys

Android’s expansion into China: a big deal

For the moment, the G1 phone, made by HTC and carried by T-Mobile, is the device American consumers think of when they happen to think of Google’s Android operating system. It’s important, though, to remember that Google has much bigger ambitions for Android — It aims to make it the operating system used on phones and other devices around the world. It took another big step towards that with the introduction of the i6-Goal device in China, announced earlier this week.

Launching an Android phone in China is a big deal, because China is the single largest mobile phone market in the world, and also the manufacturing base for half of the phones found everywhere. To get some more perspective on what Android means to Chinese mobile market — and to mobile device manufacturers like TechFaith — I spoke with a friend in the Chinese mobile industry, who has worked with Android.

The maker of i6-Goal, TechFaith, is a major Original Design Manufacturer; it built this particular device in conjunction with the QIGI consumer-facing smartphone brand. So-called ODMs make white-label phones for companies like Nokia and Apple, who control the design of phones then slap on their own branding before selling them to consumers.

The i6-Goal phone itself is relatively modest; it offers a touchscreen interface, a 2 mega-pixel camera, GPS and an SD slot. The price isn’t yet set, but it will likely be inexpensive — a trend Android is likely to accelerate.

ODMs are extremely price sensitive; as they have grown more powerful within the mobile industry, they have begun looking at how to produce their own phones, my friend says. “Android is a godsend” for them. It has zero licensing costs, while competing operating systems like Windows Mobile and Symbian can cost anywhere from $7 to $15 per phone. The i6-Goal can also run Windows, so we’ll get to see how the choice of operating system affects the phone’s market prices and consumer preference.

Android has a great smartphone user interface, that includes features like web access, and Google products like applications for Gmail and YouTube. And its user interface is customizable. This is an important selling point, because users tend to play around with phones for a few minutes before deciding to buy them. Rivals like Symbian and Windows Mobile have, at least historically, made this customization much harder to do (see our recent interview with Symbian’s David Wood for more on its plans). Every single Windows Mobile interface, for example, looks pretty much the same.

This is why it is specious to compare the iPhone to the G1, as we have been saying for many months. The iPhone is a closed, all-in-one system that combines hardware, software and services like iTunes and the App Store for third-party applications. Android is just a largely open-source operating system designed for any other company in the mobile industry to put to use how it sees fit.

“Since the mobile industry value chain is highly complex,” my friend in China adds, “one of the key reasons to adopt any new technology in the mobile industry is whether it will make or save money for the price-sensitive manufacturers.”

Indeed, we have heard of a number of other ODM companies who are also starting to use Android. Already, the most obvious example of ODMs using Android to target the smartphone market is HTC. It was an ODM three years ago; today, its G1 device is the first phone to carry Android. It expects to ship around one million G1 devices by the end of this year, up from its earlier forecast of 600,000.

The iPhone is good for Apple and its partners in the mobile industry; Android is good for the many other companies that make and sell the 1.1 billion phones every year, a number that is expected to grow next year.

.. found at venturebeat

Android makes music for local developer

Steve Oldmeadow has never set foot in Silicon Valley, but this month the software developer from Perth became one of a select few to be handed a $120,000 cheque from Google.

The windfall was prize-money for a musical application called "Rayfarla" purpose built by Mr Oldmeadow in a developer challenge for Google's new Android mobile phone platform.

Android is a free mobile phone operating system and the first handset to bear its software will be released next month in the US by T-mobile.

Much like the iPhone, Android phones will be able to download dozens of mini applications such as Rayfarla that are much more focused on fun, lifestyle and entertainment than traditional computer software.

With its quirky mix of modules including a virtual cowbell, a rhythm based arcade game, and a number of virtual musical instruments, Mr Oldmeadow said Rayfarla (a wordplay on do-re-mi) was very much the product of his own experiences as an amateur musician.

"Rayfarla was designed to appeal to variety of people because it includes virtual music instruments and a lot of games. The original thinking was that kids would come in to play the games, and in the process learn more about music. From there they could start making music and possibly even jam with friends," he said.

Other winning entries in the Google challenge include geographical applications for finding cabs and going shopping, cooking and car pooling apps and a racing challenge that lets you pit yourself against others following a similar workout pattern or location.

But while the fruits of the developer challenge should guarantee Google some interesting applications at launch, competition for developer talent may tighten given Apple's application store for its iPhone users is now up and running, and reportedly generating big returns for developers.

A recent news report in the US verified claims by developers that some iPhone applications have already earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in the few months the store has been open.

Although Google will initially give away its applications for free to users for its US launch next month, a pricing model for some higher value applications is expected to be introduced soon after.

Mr Oldmeadow said Rayfarla would follow the same model in that there will be some parts of it that are free and others that will cost a dollar or two to download.

"The virtual cow bell will always be free, and then some of the games will be expanded beyond what I submitted and may be released in a 'lite' version, which is a common model in the iPhone store," he says.

He also plans to hand over some of the software code to the developer community in the spirit of open source computing.

.. found @ smh.com.au

Android: Make It Your Own.

HTC G1 Android Platform

T-Mobile HTC G1 Hardware

Run Multiple Apps, All At Once on Android-Powered Phones

Android Peeks - media in the browser

Pictures of the first Android phone, HTC Dream leaked

To be the very first Android-driven phone, the HTC Dream from T-Mobile slides, has big clear buttons and looks amazing. And the real plus here is the product picture looks pretty much done. The big T-Mobile brand confirms it as the carrier and Android looks to be nearing completion, if not all the way done.

These new images confirm all that we’ve suspected and seen so far. The Dream has a full QWERTY keyboard, a curved slide mechanism, shortcut keys and a trackball. We’re expecting the first Android phone ever before the end of the year. Check out more pictures below.