From the Android Developer’s Blog (a favorite for us at GPH):

[...] I’m pleased to announce that Android Market is now accepting priced applications from US and UK developers. Developers from these countries can go to the publisher website at http://market.android.com/publish to upload their application(s) along with end user pricing for the apps. Initially, priced applications will be available to end users in the US starting mid next week. We will add end user support for additional countries in the coming months. [...] Source.

What does this mean for you? Presumably we’ll be getting some high quality apps from developers that aren’t keen on giving anything away. I expect we’ll see many of the apps on 3rd-party stores (like SlideME, AndAppStore, Android Guys, Handango, etc.) will make appearances on the Android Market now. To compete with Google, those other stores are going to have to increase the incentive for developers perhaps through lower fees (however, Google’s rates are not outragous) or by utilizing other forms of payment from users, since the Android Market will only use Google Checkout for processing transactions.

Get ready for more apps, and to pay for them.

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I know it’s been a very long time since the site has been updated, but I figured I’d kick it in the pants for this guide on HeHe2.net for jailbreaking your G1. This guide will give you “root” access, which basically lets you do whatever you want to your phone, just like special developer’s G1 from Google allows.

[...] Before I start this howto, I must tell you that this hack doesn’t just give you multitouch, it actually opens up the possibilities wide open for you. You can change your theme, tether (use your phone as a wireless modem), auto-rotate, get a fully operable task manager…and much much more! So if you aren’t really interested in multitouch, this guide might also be of great value for you [...]

This will also allow you to install applications from other Linux distributions, such as the widely-used Debian. All the usual warnings apply when dealing with firmware changes. Happy hacking!

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Amol Sharma at The Wall Street Journal published an analysis of T-Mobile’s Android phone strategy and overall plan to differentiate itself from the pack of massive American cell-phone companies.

[...] It is likely that T-Mobile will be the first U.S. carrier to bring a Google-powered cellphone to market. The two sides have been working together for several months to develop the specifications for a new device, which would be powered by the Google-backed Android open operating platform. The companies have declined to name the manufacturer of the phone, but most people in the industry suspect it is Taiwan’s HTC Corp. The effort puts T-Mobile ahead of Sprint Nextel Corp., the only other U.S. carrier among the 33 partners Google announced last week in its push for open operating platforms for cellphones.

[...]

As the discussions ramp up, the wireless carrier faces some challenges. It must ensure that the openness of the Android platform doesn’t compromise customers’ privacy or make their phones more susceptible to hacking and viruses. Android will make it possible for independent developers to create a range of new applications using information they normally don’t have access to, including a user’s geographic location and communications history. T-Mobile says it will screen third-party applications to protect customers’ security and privacy. [...] (Emphasis mine. -Alex)

If you remember, T-Mobile is a founding member of the Open Handset Alliance (the governing body for Android). It’s disappointing that T-Mobile will be “protecting” customers by screening third-party applications. The robust home-brew apps for Android are important for many of people, especially those who would buy one of the initial offerings thanks to T-Mobile. I really wish T-Mobile would reconsider their stance on screening applications, but I’m not optimistic. I’m more hopeful that we’ll be able to flash our GPhones to use whichever Android build we’d like. That would be our heaven.

[ Read:  T-Mobile Wagers Deal With Google Is Worth the Risk - Wall Street Journal ]

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Stefano Mazzocchi takes an interesting look at how Google is able to skirt around Sun’s various licensing traps for different Java platforms:

[...] Google announced the release of their Android platform, which would be able to run Java applications on a mobile phone but it would also be released under the Apache License v2.

This raised more than one eyebrowse, and sure did make me raise mine: how did Google manage to get Sun to license off a platform that could very well kill their own?

Turns out, they didn’t: their move was even smarter than Sun’s.

Today Google released the Android code and I took a serious look at its internals… and found the solution for the licensing problem. It’s called Dalvik and it’s the new name of Sun’s worst nightmares. [...]

I’ll spoil it for you: Dalvik is the name of Google’s Java-compatible custom virtual machine that runs the applications for GPhones. Stefano’s post is definitely worth reading if you’re interested in the licensing aspect of Android.

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Today the official Android Developers blog went live!

One of our goals in releasing the Android SDK is to unleash the creativity of application developers on the platform. We’d also like to get feedback early enough that we can make changes before the first Android-powered devices are available to the public. We plan to release updates to the SDK regularly which means that there will be additions and changes to the APIs and user experience — subscribe to this blog to stay up to date.

We’re really looking forward to seeing all the amazing applications that developers will create on an open mobile phone platform. In fact, you may even want to enter your application into the Android Developer Challenge — a USD$10 million challenge sponsored by Google to support and recognize developers who build great applications for the Android platform.

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Sergey Brin and Steve Horowitz discuss the availability of the SDK, that it will be open source in the future, and demo applications on the Android platform.

[YouTube]

The “GPhones” shown in the demo vid come in smartphone and touch-screen varieties. They also utilize 3G data speeds which offer quicker load times and more bandwidth for mobile internet access. The browsers are built on the WebKit framework (the same one used in Safari, Symbian OS, and KDE’s Konqueror browser). The Google maps API is used heavily, including street view on the phone.

In addition to the cool Google app, they also show off a demo of Quake running on OpenGL. So I think it’s fair to say it runs doom! The SDK is releasing today, so we’ll have more info soon.

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Just a reminder: Today is the day we are supposed to see the guts of the Android OS.

From the Android developer’s page:

We will make available an early look at the Android™ SDK on November 12, 2007. We invite you to visit us again at this time to download the SDK.

We view Android as a “living” platform and look forward to working with the developer community to continuously enhance and enrich the platform.

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The tech web is going crazy right now with the announcement this morning of the Google-led Open Handset Alliance and their Android mobile OS. Right now the OHA is 34 members strong. A handful of partners in the OHA (including executives from Google, HTC, T-Mobile, Motorola) just finished a conference call to announce the phone and take questions from the press. As we learn more from this call, we will keep you up-to-date.

It’s confirmed that the Linux kernel will be the base of the phone. Google will be applying the Apache open-source license to the SDK, which doesn’t have a “copyleft” clause in it. This means developers can release software under the license without having to disclose the source if they don’t want to. This obviously helps attract more big businesses to develop software for the phone.

We at GPhoneholic have long been suspicious that the long-rumored “GPhone” will not necessarily be a branded Google handset in the traditional sense. Google’s bread-and-butter is in software. The Android announcement confirms that Google is working primarily on making the phone’s software while partnering with 33 other companies to help them accomplish a full spectrum of Android deployment. Right now there is no official “GPhone”, but rather the beginning of perhaps hundreds of GPhones manufactured and developed by the OHA.

We can expect to see the first Android-based phones in the second half of 2008. The SDK will be available starting November 12th, 2007, which is just one week away at the time of this writing.

Android will apparently include a robust HTML browser. And we shouldn’t expect to see it driven by Google adsense ads at any level other than the website a user may be visiting. Of course, this is still up to the individual carriers, since they have full control over what goes into the Android OS that they roll into their phones.

The minimum requirements for an Android-based phone are somewhere near a 200MHz ARM9 processor. Screen sizes can be either large or small, and keyboards can either be traditional 1-9 or QWERTY styles. And of course, there’s no reason why Android won’t work with the new 700 MHz frequency spectrum which will be up for grabs next year.

The UI is said to be very slick. Hopefully we’ll see a preview of what it looks like on November 12th.

Check out this video from Google on the announcement of Android:

This is a very exciting time for us at GPhoneholic. We’ve been covering Google mobile phone rumors for over 2 months here, and now it looks like the “GPhone” is finally going to become well-known with the public. I imagine we’ll be covering Android news much like a Windows Mobile or iPhone blog would for their respective operating systems of choice. Is this name of our blog still relevant? I’d say it’s good enough for now. Of course, we’re always open to suggestions.

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