Google readies Android army

Apple has its OS X but that only runs on the iPhone. Google's Android, however, has been designed to run on many devices, and some are predicting it could unleash a raft of new handsets and makers.

The Co-founder of the nicely titled, 'The Astonishing Tribe', Hampus Jakobsson, a member of  the Open Handset Alliance that has played a part of Android's development, has told Tech Radar that the Google platform will: "lower the bar for developers," leading to, "an explosion of new phone manufacturers."

Jakobsson says building phones is relatively easy, but making them attractive isn't, and that's where Android will help, from the user interface side of things at least.

Meanwhile, more details have been emerging on how the finished product will look. Cnet Asia's John Chan has been given a glimpse of the UI and some of the apps developers have been busy creating for it.

He was able to play around with the desktop, which resembles a PC desktop, but is larger than the actual LCD of the phone. He states: "Swiping the finger at the sides of the screen will move this desktop around." Nice.

The 20 default Google apps include, "a YouTube program with which you can search and view all YouTube clips, " and (not surprisingly), "a Gmail app and Google Maps." Problems of running too many programmes at once are also handled by a cunning task manager, which "freeze dries" apps running in the background to free up resources.

Interestingly, Chan was shown Android working on a device that looked a lot like HTC's TyTn II. Given that HTC is signed up to the Open Handset Alliance, it might be a clue to an early Android handset.