ZEDRAY

Mike “I’m-English-I’ve-brought-my-passport-to-prove-it” Jennings gave a lovely and informative presentation on his new Android handset, which he kindly demoed during the keynote speech but subsequently refused to take out of his pocket during the rest of the day.

Apparently Mike only got authorisation to show this phone in the last 2-3 days, with this being the first time the device has officially been shown in Europe (thanks guys).  Apart from the keynote at the beginning of the day, no one was allowed to view the device close up.

A few notes taken from where I was sitting:

• It’s black (not white only, as some overzealous bloggers had feared)
• Supports Wi-Fi and 3g (or is that 3G?)
• The brand and operator logo were taped out, although logo size and phone form factor would be consistent with the HTC/T-mobile/‘Dream’ device we have already seen.  It appears Mike was trying not to steal the wind from next weeks *official* device launch.
• All Android devices will have GPS (although this will not be compulsory), but no GPS demo was possible as the device couldn’t get a signal under the Wembley conference hall.  Kudos however goes to Google Maps for automatically switching over to cell-id (or is that Wi-Fi) based position information (and visualisation).  It would be interesting to know if this was a feature of Google Maps for Android, or something baked into the platform.  As discussed before, this kind of position approximation will be vital for all those location based social applications we have been promised.
• Mike demoed an accelerator app called blue dot, similar to the Nokia bouncing ball.
• Web browsing was in landscape mode, not portrait, although Mike didn’t choose to demo the slide out keyboard for us.
• Ironically Mike didn’t demo an actual phone call, even when prompted.  His explanation was that he only had a data SIM card in the phone.  To date, I have never seen any Android voice, audio, or text to speech capabilities, which is a situation oddly reminiscent of the old iPhone release joke.

Mike spent the rest of the morning making the most out of his public relations training, as he faced a tough audience hungry for meaty technical details.  Having to field the now obligatory-at-Android-pre-release-conferences “Operators are bastards” question (actual quotation) and taking it in his stride.

Video now on youtube

This event turned out to be a lot of fun, despite a registration glitch that sent me a “this event if full, try again next year” email.  A big thanks to Silvia for encouraging me to follow up on that email and get myself re-registered (you’re a star) and to someone at Google call Liz for forwarding all the final event details.

What made the event was the free food, friendly presenters and the chance to make some quality Android contacts.  Highlights being Mike “I’m-not-an-American-I’m-Canadian-with-a-British-passport” Jennings’s Android keynote/device demo/Q&A, meeting some up and coming Android consultants from novoda.com and a rather solid discussion on application traceability with alsutton.com.

A note also goes to Reto Meier who is writing (or frantically updating for 0.9) his book titled: “Professional Android Applications”.  By the sounds of things, the book will definitely be worth a read and made for a good excuse for the speaker to pick on the author while fielding some of the more technical questions.

Unfortunately I only got to *watch* the lightning talks, and not demo Snowball as I had already upgraded my laptop to Android SDK 0.9 and hadn’t had time to bring all my code up to spec.  This was a problem shared by many (to varying degrees), and is a reminder to inventors to always carry around their elevator pitch/product demo on PowerPoint.

According to an unnamed Google employee, constant SDK updating is just one of many Android problems that will be “solved by the launch”.