Mobitrends

Yesterday, Google announced the “Android Open Accessory Toolkit” and this announce got me really excited.

I love android phones. Their integration with Google is simply fantastic. They do a much better work in integrating with Gmail than my iPhone does and the Gtalk app is just incredible, it lets me chat on the go seamlessly (and there is nothing like this experience on iPhones… ). The OS itself is OK, it’s young and rapidly evolving into something more consumer-friendly, it’s far from being as polished as iOS. The apps portfolio available through the android market is getting better everyday now even featuring the iOS blockbusters and Epic’s UTEngine games.

SO basically if I were to sum up the unique selling points of android it’s Gmail/Google Integration and the Android market … only those are not Android features, they are Google phones features. The core OS being OpenSource, any device manufacturer can take the OS and port it to their device, but they won’t get any of the Google applications (no market access, no gmail….). Yet they can write on their datasheet and on billboards and shout to the world “my device runs Android”.

With even more fragmentation coming to the device market with the new tablets announced at CES today (for instance Lenovo’s LePad) the fact that the Android brand, which is one of the key brand values end-users will be relying on, does not actually mean anything and does not reflect the end-users expectations is pretty scary.

The fact that there are so many flavors on Android not featured by google even created market opportunities for Amazon or getjar to provide third-party apps marketplace, which sounds a bit like an oddity when you look at how integrated the iOS experience is. I remember last summer at GDC how developers were complaining that 70% of the users of android could not buy their product (non-availability of billing in their countries, non-google-approved devices…) and that was a huge issue that is actually stopping developers to target Android. Angry Birds even totally gave up the paying model to only put a free version + ads since it seems to be the only realistic way today.

I think it’s important to create brands to differentiate the core OS (which nobody really cares abouts, it’s no better/worse than Bada, WebOS or any other) to the set of tools that create the value of the platform and basically let you know that the device will have access to all the cool resources of the Android world.

This new product from Google is quite stunning. The android app is available as we speak and analyzes a picture you take with your phone to perform a search on it. Basically it has some shape recognition algorithm that will either recognize special shapes (a book, the eiffel tower, a bridge) and some OCR algorithms to read what’s written on the object, and search for it.

Hilarious teaser from Verizon which will obviously be releasing Android-based phones in November.
Quite a good reminder to all those iPhone fans out there about why they are feeling frustrated with their device – used to be my case and then Android appeared !

Speed Forge 3D looks like one of the first serious indie game out there for Android. Very alike WipeOut, this blazing fast futuristic racing games really shows up the potential of 3D OpenGL on Android platform. Only availabl at SlideMe yet

I love to see project going forward in the right direction. Quite a few people were skeptical about Android, I wasn’t, and every month since the first ADP1 Android device was released has proven me I’m right to believe in this OS as it has got one step closer to what the perfect mobile OS should be.
The latest 1.6 release brings a few novelties amongst which:

• Mutlitouch through “gesture API”
• Fine battery management (i.e. now you can track which process slow down your droid and are eating up the battery)
• Improved Android Market now getting closer to the best-in-class Apple appstore
• Quick serch on both local content and the Internet

All those come with dedicated APIs enabling apps to really take advantage of every new feature the OS is proposing. This is the kind of open approach I love and which will make Android a market leader. We’re now just missing the gorgeous piece of hardware that can compete with the iPhone in terms of design and we’ll get the next-gen mass market phone !

That’s really big news, Flash 10 is coming for real on Android mobile phones. The HTC Hero will be the first one featuring a native Flash Player 10. I’m pretty anxious to see how it’s really going to come out, and especially hot the tons of flash content such as rich websites or casual games are going to adapt and feel like on a mobile. HTC Hero is due July 15th.
Check out the video below to see the official Adobe announce.

Daniel a former student of mine in entrepreneurship courses at Telecom Paris launched its first venture : it’s called “SlashWars” and is a location-based role playing game in a very funny environment and leveraging on the built-in accelerometer to let you slash your opponents (see the screencast video below). With his team they built a complete universe and the result is really amazing.
Kudos to them!
They submitted their work to the SFR JTD contest due last week, wish their good luck !

Announced today, the i7500 will be the first Samsung Android phone in the market, with a release date set in June for most EU Operators. Its main features, apart from a splendid design are :

• 11.9-mm slim
• quad-band GSM, tri-band 7.2Mbps HSDPA (900/1700/2100MHz)
• 3.2-inch, 320 x 480 pixel AMOLED touchscreen
• WiFi, GPS
• 5 megapixel camera with Power LED
• 1,500mAh battery
• 8GB of storage (plus MicroSD expansion for up to 32GB more)
• standard 3.5mm heasdset jack

No real keyboard on that one but hey it looks gorgeous, and the AMOLED display (Active Matrix OLED) is supposedly ultra-sharp and very low-power – hopefully will give an autonomy boost to the smartphone. Can’t way…