Who’s On Phirst

If you're like me and like to keep up with that latest mobile phone buzz, then you've probably heard the Sept. 23 announcement of the first Android phone called the G1 to be released on T-Mobile on October 22nd. If not, Android is Google's mobile phone operating system, based on the Linux kernel which will run on a phone by HTC called the Dream. What makes Android special is that its software platform is open source! Granted there are some criticisms that it is not, currently, completely open source, but Google announced that part of the OS will be released under the Apache and GPL license.

I've been able to emulate Android on my current device, an AT&T Tilt (aka HTC Kaiser), thanks to developers on the xda-developers forums in order to get a taste of what will soon come to be. I recently installed the Android 1.0 SDK and eagerly look forward to coding some applications. I have high hopes for Android as I'm a fan of both Linux and open source software, but only time will tell.