24 September 2008
Angry internet people pooh-pooh G1 design, but what does the future hold?
You can’t sneeze on a tech blog today with hitting angry internet denizen complaints about the “boring”, “ugly” and even “obese” design of the G1 Android phone. The G1 is accused of being so, like, early-2006, yeah, well lo and behold, the design *is* from early 2006!
The G1 design looks old because it is old. Shocker! BUT, if that’s the case, surely we’re going to see massive improvements with future Android devices? Find out our predictions for the future of Andoid after the break!
The Open Handset Alliance (Google’s alliance of Big Names In The Business) have all the tech behind them to make cutting edge devices. Everyone from nVidia for the best in graphics technology to Synaptics - who it is rumoured provided the groundbreaking capacitive touchscreen in the iPhone.
Looking at something more tangible though, the G1 is manufatured by HTC, who coincidentally are in the process of unveiling the HTC Touch HD:
The specs on this phone speak for themselves - 480×800 pixel touch display, all the network radio support you could want, (Assisted) GPS, Wifi, a 5 MP camera and even a 3.5mm headphone jack. This is a soon-to-be-released product from HTC running Windows Mobile, there’s no reason why HTC can’t port this over to use Android as the OS (except truck-loads of cash from Microsoft perhaps?) and keep all those wonderful features in place. The hardware is already there! I would definitely love to buy an Android phone with that kind of feature-set, what about you?
Even if HTC don’t bother with that for some reason, the convergence of features into mobile devices is always progressing, 8 MP cameraphones are already on the market - 5 MP sensors will be standard by next year. Given the surprisingly out-of-date hardware design of the G1 (the reason it is the first Android device?), it can only be a matter of time before we see Android phones with the same feature sets as new devices on other platforms. Google are already off to a flying start in terms of hype for Android (all thanks to their “open” philosophy), things are going to get very interesting in just a few months.
What are your must-have features in future Android hardware? Remember, all you need is the hardware, and the open nature of Android means anyone can develop software using it, which is very, very exciting.