But will they... Google don't do good UI's, Phone manufacturers generally don't go good UI's. Could end up looking pretty awful. It's pretty obvious the iPhone is the big new thing in the phone market right now and it has by far the best UI of any phone. They have to atleast come up with something that looks half decent compared to the iPhone's UI or they really arn't going to slow apple down

Ill put an early bet on that.

I must admit I had never heard of Fake Steve Jobs before but just did a quick Google and found his blog. I'm still chuckling esp about "Monkey Boy " Steve Ballmer going ape over the proposed Google phone.

Stewie

i knew that google was never going to develop hardware, why would they when then can license the software to all these big name phone manufacturers....either way i am sure this will take off(probably be in beta for the next 10 years though lol)

I wonder what part mobile advertising will play in their strategy.. anyone have any idea?

I fear that the g-phone will become purely a vehicle for targeted marketing.. which is for our own good of course... :-)

Yeah, I assume the plan is more about getting data and getting more users for Google maps, Gmail and future services.

Do they plan to charge a license for using the OS? The open source nature of the project seems to suggest it'd be free.

The SDK is out, for Windows, Mac and Linux:

Andriod SDK here

You can also see Android in action here (Skypop):

Youtube link to Android in Action

After watching that, it will be interesting to see what Apple does next with the iPhone. I like what I am seeing so far

This will be great competition for Apple. Looks very interesting. The functionality built in is great, especially the way anything can be swapped out easily.

I have to say though... watching the phone demo is a bit like watching a poor man's iPhone. It's slow and clunky with tiny text and poorer UI. And... Java? Yuk.

Still, there should be some brilliant apps around not long after this thing is launched. And the browser is webkit!! So the battle for mobile phone browser has probably just been won. This is great as it means we can all target mobile websites at full CSS2.1 and not worry about IE compatibility as much.

But everything is always going to be labelled a poor man's iPhone And if someone does a similar interface, it will be labelled as an iPhone ripoff.

Don't forget the UI you are seeing now is not necessarily the one that will be used. In fact, there will be a number of different UIs, depending on the hardware manufacturer.

To be honest, Palm are going to be the big losers here. I give them 12 months and they will have either adopted Android or will be finished.

Sounds like IBM PC (and compatible) all over again to me.

In fact the whole mobile phone industry seems to be history repeating.

I wonder if Android will be taken beyond phones? What would stop a hardware manufacturer making a small desktop device or a tablet (especially one with mobile phone hardware built in)?

The HTC Shift seems to come to mind:

HTC Shift

I know most people here think Android will end up a steaming pile, *but* at least a provides a new OS with a big name behind it for hardware manufacturers. As much as I love using OS X, I hate how the OS is locked to only the type of hardware Apple wants to release. The opportunities for Apple in the engineering fields are severely limited due to hardware that is too delicate to put into a workshop or manufacturing plant.

man it looks sweet on that youtube video...

i reckon i'll get an android device over an iPhone.

I'd love to know how scalable Android is. Just as Apple can scale OS X to fit in a phone and an iPod, can Android scale up to a desktop?