ARM

Pocket-lint.co.uk have a series of shots up from the Mobile World Congress of ARM's android prototype. This is the same handset we saw a spy shot of before.

The early prototype that Pocket-lint was shown was running on the company's ARM 9 chip, two generations old, on a device that is unlikely to come to market, however that still didn't stop it performing incredibly quickly.

Although the interface will be fully customizable by the handset manufacturer, the prototype design we were shown featured a scroll bar of applications along the bottom of the screen.

The interface also had, as you'll see by the gallery of pictures, a very Apple feel to it, heavily graphical in its interface.

Meanwhile, OHA member Texas Instruments has announced it will unveil a couple of prototypes as well:

Today at Mobile World Congress, Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) (NYSE: TXN) announced it will demonstrate an early look of the Android mobile platform in two forms: a prototype handset based on TI's OMAP850 processor that also includes TI's Wireless LAN (WLAN) and Bluetooth® wireless technology solutions, as well as an OMAP3430 processor-based Zoom Mobile Development Kit from Logic PD. Both demonstrations highlight the flexibility of the OMAP platform's multi-core architecture to deliver high-performance multimedia and sophisticated user interfaces (UI) on the Android platform.

Kinda anti-climactic, ain't it?

[via AndroidGuys]

Here's an article over at Yahoo News in which ARM's CEO, Warren East, gives his opinion on the impact Android will have. From the article:

...building up a new mobile phone software platform can take years, especially in an industry where incumbents such as market leader Symbian have a lengthy head start.

"You're not going to see hundreds of millions of Google phones anytime soon," he said.

Perhaps the part Mr. Ellis is missing here is the immediate buy-in from the big handset manufacturers with membership in the OHA; if there are a number of Android-running phones suddenly hitting the market the uptake could be huge. Remember that the average buyer doesn't care what OS the phone is running, they just want to make calls and text their friends. If the subsidized Motorola, LG, or Samsung phone they're buying is running Android, then Android will get out there.