Can someone explain what the android phone is?

Question

I've recently been hearing a lot about this new top secret android phone, possibly the HTC Dream. Can someone please explain to me in simple terms what this "android" is? I really just don't seem to get it.

Answer 1

'Android' is really just a new phone operating system (OS).

Many modern phones use "Windows Mobile" version  5 or 6.  Sony Ericsson and Nokia and some Motorola and Samsungs use "Symbian".

Palm uses their own "Palm OS" but also has "Windows Mobile" devices.

Anyway, the people behind Google decided to get in on the act, and developed their own phone OS... called "Android".  

Android was designed from the ground up to be very flexible for third-party programmers -- they will have good development and debugging tools and will have APIs (interface calls) that will let them access core phone features and functions.

The big plus commercially with Android was that it's free to phone manufacturers (at the moment, if you want to build and sell a Windows Mobile phone or a Symbian phone or a Palm OS phone you need to pay a license fee to Microsoft or Symbian or Palm respectively).

There's been some controversy about the Android OS recently... Google made available their latest Software Development Kit to only a few developers so there's been some disgruntled developers out there, and the competitor Symbian have just announced this week that Symbian OS will be open source (which means no more license fee for phone manufacturers to pay and makes Symbian more competitive)... and of course the flashy Apple iPhone which has its own OS has been getting a lot of attention from developers and customers.

Anyway, watch this space!  Hopefully Android will still come to fruition and I'm looking forward to seeing what the first Android phones look like.