The Google Phone: Death of Android? Hell No!

A few fuzzy shots of the Google Phone aka the Nexus One have popped up around the 'net as of late. Finally there are a couple of clearer shots available:

A few thoughts... I love the concept of a Google Phone. Some folks have suggested that by releasing Android on its own hardware that it will kill Android as a platform - that by having a fully custom, to-spec device that was made for all of Android's strengths, that people will be turned off to third-party devices making use of the open-source operating system(Eclair, or version 2.0 was released as an SDK in October for just such a purpose). I couldn't disagree more.

The strongest argument for the death of Android as a platform would have to be the existence of the iPhone. For example, if you took the iPhone OS and attempted to port it to another device, it would most definitely be a different experience. Applications made for a certain screen size would look different, touchscreens with capacitive touch surfaces(as opposed to Apple's resistive iPhone screen) would likely run into problems with scrolling, etc. In short, the useability issues would water down the iPhone experience on other devices and effectively kill it, while demonstrating the harmony created by Apple's walled garden philosophy over their devices.

As for using this as an argument toward the failure of Android as a platform by Google releasing their own phone/Android coupling, I couldn't disagree more. In my view, Android has been a fairly big success on the open market, with the G1 breaking ground in third-party usage of the OS. Android Market(Google's app store) is experiencing growing pains with just over 16,000 applications available, and while this is small compared to Apple's 100k+ currently available, it shows a definite interest for making applications and games that work across a multitude of devices and screen resolutions.

So will the Nexus One put a damper on this momentum? No way. Given that the Nexus is made by HTC - makers of the G1 - a third-party flavour is already being brought to Google's in-house hardware effort. If anything the Google Phone works to create a 'template' of what kind of specs third-party manufacturers would hope to strive for in providing the best possible Android experience - it will compliment other devices, not drag them down. Geeks will flock to the Nexus and use it as their main testing ground for creating the most stable user experience possible. This may be directly incongruent to Apple's wildly successful execution of their hardware-specific OS and app development, but having an open, Java SDK for people to create with alongside a phone to call their own will continue to show Google can gain a strong foothold to hang with the big boys in the cellular market.

Meanwhile my hope is that Google/HTC will revise that camera lens bubble so it doesn't get scratched to pieces. Seriously, what's up with that?