The Google phone everyone was speculating about ended up being an "alliance" between Google and 39 other companies to develop a platform, and handsets for an open operating system and application set for mobile devices. It's called the Open Handset Alliance and an SDK will be available on November 12th.

What do people reckon about this? Will the phones still be a piece of shit, but just open source shit?

I am hopeful.

However it sounds like alot of chefs in the one kitchen.

Though we begrudge apples desire to control their iphone/ipod platform. I do think that the fact that it is out of the one company plays a great part behind it's success. It' simple and works 'beautifully'.

Now try getting 39 dress makers in a room to make one dress..

Did I say I was hopefull?? hehe

As Fake steve jobs said:

"Announce some big piece of unfinished stuff that may or may not ever be this or that or whatever. Get loads of other idiots on board to say they're going to support this big piece of mish-mash code or platform or apps or whatever. The stock goes up even though they haven't sold any product and won't for almost another year."

Classic Google.

Got beta?
We do.

Thats Great!!

I've got to read some more Fake Steve..

I'd laugh if the googlephone comes out in australia sooner than the iPhone.

Its more interesting to see who is in the Alliance. HTC is a big Windows Mobile manufacturer, plus there are a couple of giant Japanese telcos in there.

It may not worry Apple, but I bet Microsoft and Symbian are worried. The fact that they are releasing an SDK next week must mean that the underlying Phone OS must be in a fairly advanced stage. Next year will be very interesting imho in the mobile phone space.

Any photos of the UI?

There is no product so far

Thought they may have some UI demo photos.

From what I read, I thought each manufacturer could tailor the OS to their requirements. The underlying OS might be the same, but each UI might be different depending on which phone it is on.

Has anyone noticed that Intel and NVidia are also on board? I think this is going to be something more than open source fluff :-)

And there's the problem... from what I've read, they'll be supporting all kinds of screen sizes and probably different input methods (joystick/keypad, touch, etc). This is going to make it really hard to design good apps.

That's the best thing about the iPhone: Everything's been designed for touch and for the iPhone's specific screen size. No messing around. This IS the platform.

If Android is a collection of open source services provided by Google, then it'll be insanely cool and something I hope a lot of companies use. If it's an OS designed by 30+ companies, all with their own separate motives for being involved with the project, then it will fail. Design by committee NEVER works, especially with software. You need one ruthless ass at the top, dictating how things will be done. One vision!

So who knows. Could be good, could be Google's first big failure.

Edit:

Ok, that makes sense. Could be very cool then.

Basically BSD (or something similar) with some frameworks for UI, phone calls and SMS?

But... that doesn't make designing 3rd party apps any easier. You'd have to still target each handset.

UI is definitely going to be interesting. Google make some decent web stuff but there UI's are pretty awful. I dont expect to see anything that even remotly challenges the iPhone UI wise.

I agree. Google are great with services and web APIs. Pretty bad with UI.

But... maybe this will let someone else with good UI skills make a decent phone. Not sure who that is though.

Can't wait to see how much malware is targeted for it

According to the blurb, not all phones will be opened right up. Its up to the manufacturer. Google are providing the core OS and apps, the manufacturer can do what it likes from there. So you might find some phones are completely open, where others are closed off or limited to a very select portion of third party apps (which could still be the case with the iPhone).

As you said marc, it could end up being a big mess. We've seen what has happened with Windows Mobile trying to support everything under the sun. Its seems Apple and RIM might have the right idea at this stage, but who knows. All I know is that the sleeping giant from Mountain View is starting to make a move

I'm happy that there seems to be some traction with this... purely to force apple to keep inventing, keep working, keep competing.

The worst thing for everyone is if Apple 'wins' the mobile handset market completely and then have no-one to make sure they stay on their toes.

It's happened with the iPod... which is why there was such a huge delay before video appeared on the iPod, why wireless was missing for so long and I could go on.

I love the stuff Apple comes out with... but innovation is sometimes only driven by the need to compete... and the gPhone will make sure that Apple continues to innovate the iPhone.