Sybase, a leading provider of enterprise infrastructure and mobile software, announced last week that they will support Android platform. Sybase provides already many products and services for Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm, RIM and iPhone devices, but from the announcement we don’t know anything about the services or products that Sybase will provide to Android. How Sybase will support Android ?

“It is too early to discuss details at this point. We anticipate that as Android-based devices become available, and as the platform matures, we will be able to make more detailed product announcements.” a Sybase spokesperson told Open Handset Magazine.

Sybase is a company focused on managing and mobilizing information, it provides open, cross-platform solutions that securely deliver information anytime, anywhere, enabling customers to create an information edge. The world’s most critical data in commerce, communications, finance, government and healthcare runs on Sybase.

Sybase provides a set of services and products for mobile including advertising, applications, messaging, mobile Web, transaction and reporting.

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db4objects, provider of object oriented database for the .NET and Java, have just announced officially the availability of their solution db4o for the Android platform. Db4o is a distributed company with engineers from all over the world, but really hats off for their amazing work to make their entire solution ready for Android in record time. So for now, Android developers have full object oriented solution ready to use.

Java programmers are delighted with Android’s full object oriented platform they are frustrated by its bundling with a relational database, requiring cumbersome plumbing between objects and tables. db4o fills the gap by providing a fast and secure, native Java object database that makes storing objects and sharing of data between applications simple and easy.

It’s true that Android came with “Content providers” but as Carl Rosenberger, db4object’s Chief Software Architect, said in a blog post “this is not Java, it’s not object-oriented, it’s not even SQL.” Which is the missing element in Android platform : The object database solution.

This Tuesday we had the chance to talk to Nik Wekwerth, the VP of Marketing db4objects, and he told us about db4o solution for Android and how it could help developers to make fully advanced object oriented applications. “It’s all about simplicity” he told us, “In Java you prefer always to stay in Object Oriented. Object is more flexible than SQL, it doesn’t lock your memory”.

There are currently two applications ported to db4o, the Password Manager application and MapMe. It shows the capabilities of db4o and the simplicity of using objects to store and retrieve data. There is no real benchmark at this time Nik told us, but it’s clear from these two samples that using db4o is much easier and very simple to maintain.

Where can you use db4o ? “If you look at our customers, database usage is very large from planes, high speed trains, photocopiers, research …” Added Nik. DB4o proved its performance in many critical usage and their world class leaders customers like BMW, Boeing, Bosch, IBM, Intel, Ricoh, and Seagate, are certainly enough for Android developers to make sure that they have in hands a high level database solution.

Developers can write software applications that enable the backup of user data to a back-end server or their home PC. A consumer use case could be to start a game on the phone, freeze it, and continue playing at home in the evening. Business use cases include field force automation, data acquisition such as with RFID, and complex navigation systems that use locally cached geodata.

Db4o is open source under GPL, you can get started by downloading db4o for Android and start porting your current relational application, or start your new project in a fully object oriented environnement.

Popularity: 32%

Almost one month since first Android launch and the list of application is already getting bigger. This week there is another set of great and useful application, from geo localisation, text games, and mobile remote server control.

LocateMe, Geo Localisation for Android

Locateme is a se of experimens by Davanum, who is also behind the twitter and gmail client, to create a geo location application using CellID/LAC combinations and the latest Google Maps location feature.

zaTelnet, Telnet client for Android

zaTelnet, provider of mobile toolset for remote server control for mobile, already released its telnet client for Android platform. The current client emulates terminal VT100 and offers extended opportunities for interface customization, such as full screen mode, different display sizes, 240×240, 240×480, 480×480 and 480×640 screen resolutions, portrait and landscape orientation modes, screen with adjustable size and different font sizes.

Twisty, z-machine interpreter for Android

For text adventure games fans, they can have fun on Android with Twisty, the first z-machine interpreter for Android platform. The application allows to play Infocom classics as well as hundreds of newer text adventures written in the last ten years or so. The package comes bundled with a few built-in games, but also allows you to load games from your sdcard.

There are more amazing solutions and technologies coming to Android platform in the next days to make application development easier and faster. Some of them already exists such the IntelliJ IDEA plugin, or the android-positron. There are also very important database solutions that we’ll see with more details in future posts.

Popularity: 28%

Unwiredview posted about what it appears to be the first Google phone. According to a Forbes article mentionning some of the phone specifications, the phone is an HTC Omni Communicator which was planned for this year using Windows mobile 6, then delayed to 2008, to get Android ready on it. According to Forbes :

The phone, code-named “Dream” inside Google, looks somewhat like Apple’s iPhone: It is thin, about 3 inches wide and 5 inches long, and features a touch-sensitive, rectangular screen. Unlike the iPhone, the screen is also time-sensitive: Hold down your finger longer, and the area you’re controlling expands. The bottom end of the handset, near the navigational controls, is slightly beveled so it nestles in the palm. The screen also swivels to one side, revealing a full keyboard beneath. (The screen display changes from a vertical portrait mode to a horizontal display when someone uses the keyboard.)

First HTC Omni with a Windows key in its keyboard

Some of the known features of the HTC Omni include the 32 bit Qualcomm MSM7200 Chipset, in addition to a 800 x 480 px TFT 262 color touchscreen, and a querty keyboard 65 keys, but defintely without the Windows button. More features include :

• 256 MB ROM
• 128 RAM
• GSM850, GSM900, GSM1800, GSM1900, UMTS850, UMTS1900, UMTS2100 connectivity
• CSD, GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA, HSUPA data support
• SDIO, microSD, TransFlash expansion slots
• USB 2.0 client, 60Mbit/s , USB Series Mini-B (mini-USB) connector
• Bluetooth 2.0
• 802.11b, 802.11g
• NMEA 0183 , 20 channels built-in GPS
• 3.1 Mpx camera with LED flash
• 640×480 VGA secondary camera
• Dimensions: 81 x 130 x 16 mm

These are the known features of the first revealed HTC Omni, but there will be probably changes before seeing the Handset in second half 2008 running with Android. Hoping to see more teasers of this new gadget, because from the current pictures only we really can’t see much.

Popularity: 36%