Obvious Ideas

Microsoft really outperformed themselves with Windows Phone 7. They took the best ingredients of both the iPhone and Android, added some of their own and created something that has a lot of potential. I’m saying potential, because until we see the actual device and feel the experience, it’s impossible to know if they succeeded or not.

I really like their attention to details/perfection in the UI for this device and the effort they put in conveying this to the developers. Windows developers are usually less UI-centeric (as opposed to Mac developers), so extra work required here.

I also love the fact that they didn’t just create another take on the iPhone experience, but created something of their own. Because when I say they took elements from the iPhone and Android, I mean just concepts – like the attention to details and one-consistent experience from the iPhone or the back button and multiple integration points from the Android. The overall experience is completely theirs and I like their concept that an application is one wide canvas, that part of it is being revealed at a time.

I’m really curious to see what affect the release of this phone is going to have on the mobile market. This phone isn’t iPhone-killer, but it certainly has the potential to be the Android killer…

What do you think?

After seeing all this videos of prototype Android devices from 3GSM at Barcelona, it’s time for some more good news – as I reported earlier on twitter, Google has finally released the new Android SDK. As Dan Morill mentioned on the Code Day, the new SDK introduces a new UI (although Google promised that it still work in progress), new Eclipse plugin and some very interesting API changes -

• New user interface – As I mentioned when we introduced the m3 version of the Android SDK, we’re continuing to refine the UI that’s available for Android. m5-rc14 replaces the previous placeholder with a new UI, but as before, work on it is still in-progress.
• Layout animations – Developers can now create layout animations for their applications using the capabilities introduced in the android.view.animation package. Check out the LayoutAnimation*.java files in the APIDemos sample code for examples of how this works.
• Geo-coding – android.location.Geocoder enables developers to forward and reverse geo-code (i.e. translate an address into a coordinate and vice-versa), and also search for businesses.
• New media codecs – The MediaPlayer class has added support for the OGG Vorbis, MIDI, XMF, iMelody, RTTL/RTX, and OTA audio file formats.
• Updated Eclipse plug-in – A new version of ADT is available and provides improvements to the Android developer experience. In particular, check out the new Android Manifest editor.

As for the UI change, you can watch the following videos (origin) from 3GSM Barcelona :

You can see a more complete list of the major changes here (you can also find a complete difference report here). So what are you waiting for? Go upgrade

It seems the Twitter is back online, so I’ve started updating there.

Soon I will upload the photos to Flickr.

Update 15:15: Caught a talk with Ouriel Ohayon (Ouriel is live blogging the event on Techcrunch.fr and on Twitter).

Update 15:40: I’m keeping updating from time to time on Twitter, and uploaded some photos to Flickr.

Update 15:50: Ouriel mentions on his blog, that the Android is going to be much more influencing than the iPhone. I guess he’s right. And now I’m happy that I didn’t buy an iPhone

Update 16:33: Dan Morrill is doing a code demo. For me, after watching his video demo, it’s a bit boring… Although from a quick survey Dan conducted earlier, it seems that most of the audience didn’t watch the video demos or even downloaded the SDK.

Update 17:20: Caught a talk with Dan Morrill. I had some really good questions, so he wrote them down and I hope to see updates from Google soon.

Update: I’m back home. At the weekend I will post a summary and my thoughts on Android. Hope you enjoyed the coverage

Arik

Thanks to a tip at SMO.co.il blog, I found out that Google conducting a day long introduction for their Android cellular phone operating system – the Android Code Day. This event takes place today in London, UK and here in Israel. Also on the 23 February they’re having a similar day in Boston, Massachusetts.

I’m attending the event here in Tel Aviv, if Twitter servers start responding I will tweet the event from time to time (you can follow me here). I’m bringing my camera, and will post the photos under “Android Code Day” tag on Flickr.

Hope to learn new cool stuff,

Arik