Otaku Gadgets

Have you been noticing this? Almost every major phone manufacturing company has announced at least one Android Phone by now and some have already released their first or second-generation Android phones. What started out as a small deployment last year is now becoming bigger with every release. Looks like Google is living up to its announcement of having about 18 Android phones by the end of this year. Get to the other side for the recent Android developments and devices.

Android 1.6 ‘Donut’ SDK

Continuing naming Android point releases after confections, Google has released the 1.6 Donut SDK for Android developers. This is for the upcoming public release of the Donut upgrade to Android that will bring a few major additions and mostly tune-ups and polish jobs to the Android OS.

Amongst the major additions is the addition of CDMA compatibility. This does not mean much at the moment but it means that we will soon get a bunch of new CDMA phones running on Android. The other major addition is the higher resolution support of QVGA and WVGA resolutions. This essentially makes sure that the future Android devices will be able to have great looking screens with high resolutions. Watch the video below to learn more about Android 1.6

Archos 5

French company Archos has finally made their Archos 5 Internet tablet device official. This device has been closely followed by everyone through a slew of leaked photos that were put up all over the Internet.

The Archos 5 descends from a line of tablets that used to run Archos’ own home brewed Linux OS. But this time round Archos has made the wise decision of going for the Android OS. The new tablet runs a custom shell on top of Android. It runs on an 800MHz processor and has a 4.8inch widescreen touch sensitive display that has a resolution of 800×480 pixels. The touchscreen is not capacitive but resistive. Still, it seems to be quite responsive from the reviews and the videos that we have seem of it so far.

Amongst the other features, the things that would interest the readers of this blog would be the following – WiFi (802.11 b/g/n) and Bluetooth (easily connected with your mobile phone for Internet access). However, since Archos is mainly a media devices oriented company, the focus of the Archos 5 is on media playback. It does have the Android webkit based browser but it does not support too many functions that would enable you to use it as a normal tablet with a touchscreen based interface.

All hope is not lost though because this is Android after all and there means there are apps out there that you can use.

Motorola CLIQ

Motorola has recently launched its first Android based phone – the CLIQ. The CLIQ is your usual (3inch) touchscreen equipped phone with a slide out keypad to aid in non-stop messaging via a 3G network. The form factor is nothing new and a lot of the newer touch based smartphones have come out with this form factor because it seems to working quite well for the consumer market. Still, Motorola manages to make the Cliq standout by designing it well. The Cliq has smooth good looks that look very impressive with the curved edges, rounded corners and a great keypad.

However, the Cliq’s marketing point is definitely software. Not only is it an Android phone, it also has a special custom-built social media architecture via a custom shell called BLUR. BLUR is what runs on top of Android on the Cliq and incorporates the special social networking features that the phone is marketed for. The feedback has not been too good though. Although people like how it looks, they hate the convoluted UI that constantly gets in the way and has a steep learning curve. Sounds like the usual Motorola phone to me.

LG GW620

LG is the latest to join the Android fold with the announcement of its first Android phone – the GW620. Previously known as Etna, very little is known about it outside of what the press release says.

From the announcement we gather that the phone will be touchscreen based with a 3inch touch sensitive display and a slide out keypad for tactile typing. The phone’s keypad does not look all that promising in the images though. Hopefully it will be better in person. LG says that the phone will be consumer-friendly and will appeal to first time smartphone buyers. With any luck, this claim will not turn out to be a large set of gimmicky features that will only hold the phone back from being a popular Android phone.

LG so far has been great at making phones but the software inside the phones has so far been annoying at best. Hopefully this will change for god with the Android backing. Not that Android guarantees a good UI though.

iNQ Going Android

iNQ has been bringing up affordable phones packed with niche features for quite some time. Now they have announced that they are going to use Google’s Android OS for the future phones that are going to be touchscreen based. iNQ is known for phones like the Facebook Phone and Twitter Phone. It is of course anybody’s guess what those phones are meant to do.

iNQ’s basic premise is to make phones that are cost effective and have tight integration with online services such as the ones mentioned above. The company has not been very forthcoming with the details but it is certain that their first touchscreen phone is in the pipeline and it will be running Android.

Meanwhile, others like Samsung and HTC have already released Android based phones with HTC already releasing its 2^nd line of Android phones. If anything, HTC is actually getting better at making great phones with every new line.

One thing is becoming quite apparent from these releases – Android’s on the move and its presence is getting quite big. Also, the higher the number of Android phones get, the greater the third party attention will be. Result – more apps and great ones at that.