The Androids Are Coming!

The year 2009 will be remembered as the year that many phone manufacturers have released their first Android OS-powered smartphones.  First, it started with the Taiwanese phone maker HTC, with their HTC Dream which was marketed in the US by T-Mobile as the G1 (the Google phone).  HTC then followed it up with HTC Magic.  Then the Australian manufacturer Kogan produced its Agora Pro.



If you haven't heard about these brands, it's because they're relative newcomers compared to established names like Nokia, Motorola, etc.  But as the Android operating system is open source (meaning, it's easier to look inside the code), it's also easier for a manufacturer to develop new phones and new phone software.

Anyway, later Samsung announced it's first Android offering, the Samsung Galaxy, becoming the first big name to do so.  HTC fired back with HTC Hero.  Then Motorola announced its Motorola Dext.  LG also made it official with its LG-GW620 (Eve).  And the list keeps growing...




For the first time in history, we can now easily develop mobile applications on a single phone from a single manufacturer and be confident that this software will run without problems on many other phone models made by other manufacturers!  This reminds me of the PC revolution more than a decade ago when software can run on PCs built by different hardware manufacturers.  This can only be good news for both software developers and mobile phone users.