Google promises cell phone openness

Google's Android cell telephone software system will supply new ways to stop up in to information and new freedoms for radio users, the company said yesterday at a San Diego engineering conference.

Mountain View-based Google is leading development of the open-source telephone software, which will be made available for free to telephone manufacturers.

Users of Android-based phones, or gPhones, can anticipate freedom to command the software system that tallies on their smart phones, a Google Android developer said at the O'Reilly ETech conference. The event, which focuses on emerging technology, was held at the San Diego Marriott Hotel and Marina.

Manufacturers and mobile-service providers often lock down features, control downloads and curtail outside programs. The iPhone have been closed to software system from outside developers until recently.

Android is unfastened to outside software system and is being designed to give control to the user, Android developer Dan Morrill said.

“Users volition be free to vote with their feet,” Morrill said.

While similar openness drove the progress of the Web, it's not known whether the thought will motivate consumers to purchase Android phones.

“Last year, Apple shook the cell telephone human race up with the iPhone,” said iSupply radio analyst Tina Teng. “People are expecting really exciting applications on Android. But it stays to be seen.”

The first telephone using the software system is expected to be available in the 2nd one-half of the year.

In improver to user control, Android telephones will have got “cutting-edge” ways to link to data, Morrill said. Google have been one of the leadership helping consumers move online aggregations of photos, calendar information and written documents in what is often called an online “cloud of content.”

Morrill said Android telephones will be a “link to the cloud that tantrums in your pocket.”

The company have frequently demonstrated Android-based paradigms that show information from Google Maps. Yesterday it showed how it might link to online information stored in a spreadsheet.

Using the illustration of a personal database of vino evaluations that he and his married woman maintain, Morrill showed how an Android telephone could access his Google Docs spreadsheet. Instead of the familiar rows, columns and headings of a spreadsheet, the telephone displayed a series of boxes that tantrum on the little screen, each containing the name, terms and evaluation of a wine. He scrolled down the silver screen to see the full database.

The telephone also can redact the information, with alterations transmitted to the online spreadsheet.

Existing smart-phone systems let mobile entree to spreadsheets and other data, but they can be unmanageable on a little screen, Morrill said.

“Is the solution to seek and download the whole application onto the phone? We believe the reply is 'no.' ”

Jonathan Sidener: (619) 293-1239;