Stefan Arentz

I’ve been reading a lot about Android now that they have opened up for developers. The videos are specially nice to see.

Android is really awesome. If Android can gain market share, and I think it certainly can, then it can break open the WindowsMobile/Symbian/J2ME mess that we are currently in. All those platforms are terrible to develop for. They closed and proprietary in different ways and seem to be more about limiting your options than to encourage developers to write kick ass mobile apps.

Android will disturb the current mobile phone market - It will finally be an escape from the Nokia and Sony Ericsson domination. Hopefully Android will unleash a wide range of interesting phones. Sure, there are other brands next to the usual players but they all suck because they run some lousy operating system that was developed by people who have no clue. Android can turn that around. The phone market can finally be more open, which means more choice for you and me.

Android is Open - It’s not just Open because the platform is largely (or even completely?) open source. It is open because there is no required registration to the Symbian gang, no requirement to be a Microsoft developer, no requirement to buy expensive development tools, no requirement to become a licensee before you can distribute your applications. It’s open source without non disclosure agreements, with a community that is already growing very rapidly, with tools and with emulators.

Android is Modern - The Java (language, but not the virtual machine, they seem to have created their own) based APIs are simple, elegant and modern. The API exposes phone functionality in a simple way, and more importantly, let’s you write applications can interact with eachother. This is something that is missing bigtime in the current Symbian/J2ME world. Your application there are little islands. This so reminds me of General Magic. I wish I could find my GM SDK CDs that I got some 10 years ago while attending Apple’s WWDC. There must be many similar concepts.

Android is designed to do mashups - I hate the word mashup but ok .. Android allows you to easily combine Web and Android applications to do mashups. Google Maps is an obvious one but there are so many more interesting posibilities. Also, Android runs WebKit and just as in the iPhone that allows you to lessen the distance between a ‘real’ and web based app.

Android runs on your Mac and Linux box - I’m sure this means nothing to people who have been living in the Windows world, developing their Symbian C++ horror, but to me this is absolutely great news. I can finally simply download the Android Eclipse plugins and have my first app running in 15 minutes. Without worrying about development tools. Allowing Mac and Linux folks to develop for the platform in an easy way is so smart. There is a lot of creativity in that world.

I wish I could find the time to do an Android app. Maybe the price money and opportunities are good incentives to change my priorities