An alien’s viewpoint

Just about everyone in the technology field is aware of the release of the first Android phone by T-Mobile.  Naturally, there have been many mixed reactions to that release.  The device is by no means perfect.  For example, I personally hope that the next Android phone to be released has a standard headphone jack.  Nevertheless, there is a feature about Android that is very exciting to techies and reminds me of the early days of the Palm Pilot, it is open and enthusiast developer friendly.

In those early Palm days, developers took to the Palm Pilot with tremendous excitement.  There were new applications coming out at a relentless pace.  And, since a lot of the developers were simply having fun or trying to get a handle on the platform, most of those apps were free. Even I jumped on the fray and made a little application to help some of my Palm needs from back then.  Those of you that had Palm Pilots in those days probably remember meeting complete strangers with similar Palm devices and sharing applications withe each other through the infrared port.  Not only was it fun, it was also practical.

I personally have so many balls in the air that I find it very hard to function without a PDA to help me keep things straight and to help me remember things.  (Warning, if you can function without a PDA you are better off not getting one because your memory will only get worst once you have one.) The reason I got a PDA in the first place was that I was having a hard time keeping up and was starting to drop some balls.  The Palm Pilot was just what I needed, and down to today, a few minutes ago in fact, the Palm continues to keep me out of trouble.

However, I recognize that in today’s world the Palm does not produce the same level of excitement in developers that it used to.  One of the most important reasons for this is that the Palm OS itself has too many limitations, and, frankly, Windows Mobile is not exciting.  Palm, the company, has been aware of this fact for years and has been promising a new Linux based OS for just as long.  However, the mythical Linux based Palm has never come.  Another problem with the Palm platform is that there is only one company making devices for it.  Competition tends to encourage better quality and more innovation.  This has been absent from Palm.  (My last two devices started to malfunction not long after the warranty expired.)

This has had me thinking about jumping ship for a while, but I hadn’t seen an alternative that was compelling enough.  Sure, I could probably do everything I need to do with a Windows based PDA, or a Black Berry, or an IPhone, but I would miss a lot of the free and open source applications that are so readily available in the Palm.  Besides, none of those devices play well with my favorite desktop OS, Linux.

But, now there is Android.  The official definition of Android is this: “Android is a software stack for mobile devices that includes an operating system, middleware and key applications.”  And, very interestingly, “Android relies on Linux version 2.6 for core system services such as security, memory management, process management, network stack, and driver model. The kernel also acts as an abstraction layer between the hardware and the rest of the software stack.”  That is right, Android is a Linux platform.  What this tells me is that Android is going to be irresistible to PDA open source developers.  And, if that is where they are going, that is where I want to be.

The lack of integration with Exchange is no problem at all to me.  I am becoming quite a fan of Google applications.  In fact, I am just about finished testing Google Applications Premier Edition for a client and it looks like it is a go.  They are migrating all their mail and collaboration tools to Google.  From what I have seen, the integration of Google Apps in Android is excellent!  That is all I’m going to need as far as corporate mail goes from now on.

My current Palm TX is still working, but I can’t access the icons at the bottom of the screen. (This is aparently a widely ocurring problem from what I see here and here and here.  I’ll have to give the solutions offered in the links a try). Fortunately, I have been able to limp along by having the screen rotated.  But one thing is for sure, this is my last Palm device.  Lets see what other Android devices appear before my current Palm completely dies.  In the mean time, I may just download the Android SDK and start playing around with it.  Hopefully a Jython port shows up soon.  I can already see that Android is going to bring back some long missing excitement to my PDA use.  How about you?

P.S.: Here is a good example of what I am talking about: 8 Killer Apps for Android and Best Free Google android Apps