Mobiles @ NCSU

Android 'started over' the day the iPhone was announced

A wise wait to emphasize touch.

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// published on The Verge - All Posts // visit site

Apple's boast that the iPhone changed everything about the mobile industry has received some support from one of Android's original software architects. Chris DeSalvo, who worked alongside Andy Rubin at Danger before joining Google to build its mobile OS, says that the iPhone's announcement forced everyone on his team to realize that they "are going to have to start over."

Already in intensive development for two years by 2007, Android was Google's vision for a mobile operating system of the future. Still, in spite of all the work that had already gone into it, the Mountain View company was sure it couldn't carry on along the trajectory it'd been following — the earliest Android devices looked very much like Googlified BlackBerrys...

Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary

// published on Ars Technica // visit site

Aurich Lawson

Six years ago, in November 2007, the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) was announced. The original iPhone came out just a few months earlier, capturing people's imaginations and ushering in the modern smartphone era. While Google was an app partner for the original iPhone, it could see what a future of unchecked iPhone competition would be like. Vic Gundotra, recalling Andy Rubin's initial pitch for Android, stated:

He argued that if Google did not act, we faced a Draconian future, a future where one man, one company, one device, one carrier would be our only choice.

Google was terrified that Apple would end up ruling the mobile space. So, to help in the fight against the iPhone at a time when Google had no mobile foothold whatsoever, Android was launched as an open source project.

In that era, Google had nothing, so any adoption—any shred of market share—was welcome. Google decided to give Android away for free and use it as a trojan horse for Google services. The thinking went that if Google Search was one day locked out of the iPhone, people would stop using Google Search on the desktop. Android was the "moat" around the Google Search "castle"—it would exist to protect Google's online properties in the mobile world.

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Finland and Nokia: An affair to remember

Well done story.

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// published on Ars Technica // visit site

Wired UK

Pride and diversity. Dependency and acquaintance. Pride and nostalgia. Sun and moon.

These are the answers given by Nokia's vice president of software, the research director of ETLA (the Research Institute of the Finnish Economy), Finland's minister of European Affairs and Foreign Trade, and the CEO of Jolla—now Finland's new smartphone hope. The question was: use one word to describe Nokia's historic relationship with Finland and one word to describe it in the future. For those of you confused by the last answer, it has to do with which orbits which.

The trend is striking, even from Nokia itself. The company that built a country has lost its aura and relinquished the controls.

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Find: A look back at iconic Nokia phones

Nice.

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// published on The Verge - All Posts // visit site

Today, depending on your perspective, we either mourn the loss of one of the most important phone makers ever, or celebrate that the people behind so many iconic phones will continue to work under the Microsoft flag.

As Microsoft, Nokia, and any number of regulatory authorities get to work on finalizing the $7.3 billion deal that will see Microsoft buy Nokia's Devices and Services devision, take a moment to look back at some of Nokia's most beautiful, important, and bizarre creations.