Meanwhile, also on Monday, Vodafone Spain made a surprise announcement that it is launching HTC’s Magic handset, the second Android phone to reach the market after the T-Mobile G1 (also made by HTC).

Samsung’s Android handset combines the Google-led mobile platform with a five-megapixel camera, GPS and a 320×480-pixel, 3.2-inch Active Matrix OLED (AMOLED) touchscreen. At 11.9mm thick, it uses a 1500 mAh battery and includes a 3.5mm headphone socket. The HTC Magic has a 320×480 3.2-inch LCD screen, a 3.2 megapixel camera, is 13.6mm thick and has a 1340 mAh battery. It has no 3.5mm headphone socket.

Based on current information from manufacturers, the i7500 will be the first non-HTC manufactured Android phone on sale. The device uses a 528MHz Qualcomm chipset and has 8GB of internal memory, with a micro-SD slot for up to 32GB of add-on memory.

The browser included in the i7500 will, according to O2’s statement, be “Chrome-Lite”. Android’s browser has never been explicitly named, but is based on the same WebKit framework as Google’s desktop browser, Chrome.

The pricing for O2 Germany’s release of the i7500 has not yet been confirmed officially. Contacted on Monday, neither O2 UK nor Samsung itself had any details available on UK release dates or pricing. Vodafone Spain’s pricing for the HTC Magic is from €19 (£17) to €199 (£17 to £180) on monthly tariffs from €62 to €21.

Other manufacturers scheduled to bring out Android handsets include Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Acer.

A new Android 1.1 system image is now available for download from HTC. The Android dev phone 1 (ADP1), which was introduced in December offers both an unlocked bootloader and easy flashing support, so you can better install custom Android builds.

The 1.1 developer build is fully compatible with the retail 1.1 Android release. This allows programmers to test software on their dev units with a matching installation. This Android Developers site has set up a Google group dedicated to questions and answers about updating the Android dev phone.

Be aware that the ADP1 install locks out access to copy protected Market applications. According to this blog post, the ADP1 allows unrestricted access to the device filesystem, precluding copy restrictions. To guard against intellectual property theft, the ADP1 apparently blocks off market access to any copy protected app. “If you choose to add copy protection when you upload your application to the Android Market, then you won’t be able to test it on the ADP1’s Android Market client.”

You can read through the Android 1.1 version notes, and the 1.0 system image remains available for anyone who needs to downgrade for whatever reason. ]]> http://www.linux4mobile.com/google-android-gphone/android-new-system/feed/ http://www.linux4mobile.com/google-android-gphone/motorola-smartphones-put-android-on-hold/ http://www.linux4mobile.com/google-android-gphone/motorola-smartphones-put-android-on-hold/#comments Wed, 11 Mar 2009 09:59:04 +0000 mck http://www.linux4mobile.com/?p=238 New EDA MC55 models fit in the mid-range among Motorola’s range of enterprise-grade smartphones, which it dubs “mobile computers,” and which include features like barcode scanners and ruggedized assembly. To keep up with the rest of the company’s EDA offerings, the two new MC55 units are built to withstand a four-foot drop on concrete. Both models have color QVGA (320 x240) display screens and are VoIP-ready, in addition to having 128MB SDRAM and 256MB Flash. The MC55 is based on the Marvell XScale PXA270 520MHz processor and Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system. A number of add-ons are also available, such as a 1D laser scanner, a 2D imager and a two-megapixel digital color camera.

The MC5590 is designed for employees who work indoors, for instance healthcare and retail workers, who rely on Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections. It can also function as a mobile phone, two-way radio, bar-code scanner, digital camera and mobile computer. Pricing starts at $1,695. “In healthcare, the 5590, because of its sealed nature, it can be wiped down,” Safir said. “It is what we call a truly ‘pocketable’ device because it’s compact, and really can fit in a pocket.” He also said that the 5590 could be used for taking orders tableside at a restaurant or for curb-side check-in at hotels.

For people who work outdoors, for example postal carriers and maintenance crews, there is the MC5574. It includes the 5590’s functionality, and weighs in at 11.8 ounces, but also has wireless WAN capability and GPS.

If you’re wondering whether Motorola has plans for the MC55 line to support the Google Android open-source mobile platform — as is the plan in other areas of the mobile giant’s business — it’s officially under consideration, but only for the long-term. Motorola official statement is that they “Continue to always explore what makes sense in terms of operating systems, and We have for the moment settled on the Windows Mobile OS as our platform of choice, though we are always willing [to work with] customers who need a specific OS for a very large deployment.”

Google’s Android division is currently blocking users of unblocked G1 phones from downloading paid applications on the Android market, the policy is aimed at preventing casual user-to-user pirating of applications and only involves copy protected applications. The new policy onle effects “copy protected” applications and not all paid applications.

But apparently a loophole in the unlocked G1 device lets users get a copy of the paid application from the Android market. “We aren’t distributing copy protected applications to these phones in order to minimize unauthorized copy of the applications,” explained the Google spokesperson. The Market, which opened in late September, had 307 free applications as of late November. According to Google there are now over 1000 free apps and hundreds of priced apps available in Android Market. The unlocked phones sell for about $400 after developers pay a $25 fee to join the Android developer program. As of January, Apple’s iPhone App Store offered 15,000 applications, with downloads hitting 500 million.

The user interface elements are accessible through the DOM and can be styled with CSS. Various widget events can be bound to JavaScript callback functions.Access to underlying platform capabilities is provided by the Services API, which is accessible through a JSON bridge. This gives applications access to the device’s geolocation, telephony, and camera capabilities. The Service API system seems to be a generalized abstraction layer through which a wide range of external services and data sources can be exposed. According to the chapter, it can also be used to access web services and data from various applications on the device. It seems likely that it’s extensible, but no details have been provided yet to indicate how that works. The platform supports headless background services that interact with the user through passive notifications and interactive dashboard elements. Persistent data storage in webOS is facilitated by the HTML 5 database features. The platform’s integrated media server supports audio and video playback through the open source GStreamer media engine. Applications are organized into a particular directory structure and are bundled with various resources and an appinfo.json file that will include application metadata. Although many aspects of the webOS platform are built on existing standards, this is one that is not.

It’s a little disappointing that Palm didn’t adopt the nascent w3c web widgets spec. Applications will have to be signed in order to run on the device. The signing services will be provided through the Developer Portal and applications will be deployed to end users through Palm’s new Application Catalog. From the details available in the chapter, it seems as though there is not going to be a single official IDE for building webOS applications. The SDK will include command-line tools and some plugins to aid webOS development with a variety of existing HTML editors including Eclipse and Aptana Studio.
It all looks very promising, new SDK (when published) should give us some more insite of the new Palm technology.