Google demos Android UI, features

For the first time, Google this week showed off what looked to be a close-to-production-ready version of its Android operating system, including touch-screen and accelerometer tools that mimic Apple’s iPhone.

In a brief demo at its developer conference in San Francisco this week, Google showed an Android home screen user interface with blocks of icons similar to the iPhone, with finger swipes used for interacting with applications. The apps were running on a prototype UMTS hardware device from an unnamed vendor, operating over an HSDPA broadband connection.

Among the applications and features demoed by Android engineering director Steve Horowitz: a Google Maps street map view that included an interactive compass that responded to movements of the phone for navigation; the ability to add shortcuts to Web sites to the home screen; a home-screen status bar for keeping up with new emails, appointments and phone calls; a zoom-in tool for viewing Web browser content; and a Pac-Man-style video game.

The interface for the demo apps was touch-screen-based, but not multi-touch as on the Apple iPhone. But Google execs said that was a hardware issue and that Android is designed to work with a multi-touch hardware sensor as well as with phones equipped with trackballs or other navigation approaches.

Android remains a developer release for now. Handset makers including Samsung, HTC and LG Electronics have said they will build Android handsets and carriers including T-Mobile and Sprint have pledged to add Android phones to their handset lineups. Because Android is open-source, it is also possible that unlocked Android phones will appear that can be moved to multiple networks; a software-only version of Android that could be side-loaded onto existing devices is also not out of the question.

The Android software is at the center of the Open Handset Alliance (OHA), which aims to create an open-source mobile platform for developers. The software, and the first phones running the mobile operating system, are expected in the second half of the year, according to Google.

“What you saw on stage looks pretty good,” said Andy Rubin, the Android project leader, in a press conference following the demo. “But we want to make sure it’s perfect and that people have a really good consumer experience with it.”