Google Android: Hands-on with the Google mobile goodness

By Andrew Lim on 12 February 2008, 4:12pm

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Today we managed to spend some quality time with a prototype handset running Google's highly anticipated mobile operating system, Google Android. Texas Instruments was showing it off at its stand to promote the prototype handset's processor, the OMAP850 -- but it's not the processor we were interested in.

Although this handset isn't supposedly going to be commercially released, we were impressed with its design. Not only is it light but it's well laid-out. The screen is wide and sharp, the navigation keys are large, making them easy to press, and the Qwerty keypad is well designed -- with each key raised so it's easy to distinguish between them.

Similar to the handset itself, the Android running here isn't the final version, but it does work and we've had a good play with it. So what's it like to use? Well, it's simple and it works -- if Google made phones... That's the thing with Android: it's very Google, and that's why we think we've fallen in love.

Symbian sceptics can sneer all they like, but when this thing comes out on a commercial phone, we think even they might change their mind. As you can see in this picture, everything is accessible via a horizontal menu you can click through using the navigation key -- it's not as clever as some other systems, but it makes much more sense than most of them.

Click through for more pictures of the Google prototype handset and find out what we stumbled on when we were poking about in Android's settings. -Andrew Lim