All the news this week in the cell phone industry has been about the new Motorola Droid which sold 100,000 units over the weekend. One of the members of TriMutiny actually just upgraded to this phone and plans on talking a bit more about it on our blog soon.
I’m not so much interested in the Droid specifically as I am the OS that comes along with it. Google Android is obviously turning the heads of phone manufactures and consumers. In fact, by years end 18-20 new phones running Android will have been launched. I’m really excited to see what Google does with Android, after all, most of Google’s projects turn out to be huge successes. One thing that I’m curious to see pan out is the way the OS is implemented on different phones.
One thing Apple has going for it is standard design. All their phones are running very similar hardware. If you’ve used on iPhone you’d feel at home picking up any iPhone and using it. Android on the other hand is being run on multiple sets of hardware, multiple networks and with multiple means of implementation. Take a look at these phones reviewed by CNET… no two phones are the same. They’re not even similar. No, I don’t expect every phone to be cloned after the first, but how will Android developers compensate for this? I need to do more research, but I can imagine it would be difficult to develop an Android specific app for phones that have totally different hardware and capabilities.