notes.husk.org. scribblings by Paul Mison.

Android at Google Developer Day London

As part of the keynote of Google’s Developer Day in London, Mike Jennings ran a demo of Android on prototype hardware. (In fact, it may have been the first public demo of such in Europe.) Some notes:

• It works, and not slowly.
• The name of the device manufacturer was covered in tape.
• The browser seemed to load + render Slashdot on a private wifi network about as quickly as my iPod touch on the public one did
• Maps works pretty much the same on both
• The public network’s SSID makes my iPod think it’s in San Jose (is there a song joke here?)
• The demo hardware had an accelerometer, and there was a “blue dot” demo app with basic physics
• Unlike Aral, I don’t think I’d notice the lack of multitouch
• It looks like the application menu is alphabeticised, which might be a nice solution to the problem of managing long app lists.

Although I don’t really have any reason to go to the Android talks, this did make them seem a bit more appealing.