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Sep. 22, 2008

T-Mobile USA has called a news conference in New York City for tomorrow, to formally announce its first Android mobile handset.

In the mean time, Google, the company behind Android and the Open Handset Alliance, has been showing the phone at certain public events.

Most recently, it was at the Google Developer Day in London last Monday. The FCC certified the phone in mid-August and speculation has been flying since then about all the various launch plans.

The first Android phone, called the Dream in FCC filings, is made by HTC. The phone also apparently will go on sale Oct. 20, although T-Mobile USA hasn’t confirmed that date.

The new wireless handset has a touchscreen which apparently is larger than Apple’s iPhone, plus GPS, Wi-Fi and will use T-Mobile USA’s new 3G network.

Besides being agressively marketed by Google, what has garnered so much attention for Android is that the operating system is being offered free of royalties. The members promise true openness to any mobile developer, with a fully integrated mobile software stack that includes the OS, middleware, a user-friendly interface and various mobile applications aimed at the broad wireless market.

Joel Espelien, strategy v.p. for OHA member PacketVideo, says the Dream will process fun applications faster than any handset on the market because the OS was built as a multitasking workhorse right from the start.

Other phone operating systems use older technology that slows them down, he said.

OHA members include other wireless handset manufacturers beside HTC, including Motorola, Samsung and LG, so more Android phones are in the pipeline. Sony Ericsson also reportedly is looking at Android. If true, Nokia would be the only one of the top five handset OEMs not using the OS.

Although some critics have said that Android is late in the cycle, the OHA and Google have only said the first phones would arrive in the second half of this year.

Rich Miner, Google’s mobile platforms chief, said that there would be “at least one” Android phone by the end of 2008 and that there would be multiple handsets next year.

Asked if Google’s new Chrome browser would be part of the handset, Miner would say only that Chrome and the Android browser both leverage the open-source WebKit browser.

Miner said the first Android phone will be tightly integrated with some Google applications but that future models may not be. Google doesn't want the phone known as the G-Phone, nor the applications to be only Google, he said.

He added there have been more than 1 million downloads of the Android software development kit since it was made available earlier in February.

Android will make location-based services easier to use than traditional phones, Miner said, because location will be integrated with other applications in the phone.

One example is that the contact addresses in the phone can be mapped on the Android phone using Google Mobile Maps.

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Source: T-Mobile USA.