We used to talk about Android, Google and the OHA without talking in details about the other partners member of the alliance and their participation. Many people who started flirting with Android technology started asking why Google is creating another Java standard (Dalvik) ? why they didn’t use the JavaME Standard? and what about old mobile applications written in the JavaMe standard, will they be supported on Android ?

Esmertec, member of the OHA, got the answer to this question. Beside contributing in the OHA initiative with their OMA applications (MMS, WAP, DRM, SyncML, and IM), Esmertec is also providing a commercial Jbed Virtual Machine (JVM) to member of the Alliance on demand. In other words, you won’t probably have access to JVM, but if you have an mobile application in JavaME standard it will easily run on Android platform thanks to Esmertec.

Esmertec’s JVM will bring easily thousands of existing Java ME applications to the Android mobile platform. So the solution already exist, even commercial, but the question still for Android’s applications and how to port them to JavaMe standard. Write once, use everywhere, isn’t always true, but isn’t impossible too. Anyway there is still someone who will have to make an extra effort to fit with the new situation.

Popularity: 27%

Since the first day of launching Android, many started asking if it is possible to run the platform on available devices. The only answer I got until now is : NO, you have to wait until 2008. Android provide in its Linux Kernel support for the Qualcomm MSM7K family of devices; and according to the official Android’s MSM Linux Kernel Development group, the current kernel tree support only the Qualcomm MSM7200A, in a work done by the Android Systems team at Google and supported by Qualcomm.

The dual processor chipsets aims to reduce the development costs by supporting more features for the handset. The MSM7200 Chipset features include :

• Supports WCDMA/HSUPA and EGPRS networks
• Multimedia Broadcasting Multicast Service (MBMS)
• Integrated ARM11™ applications processor and ARM9™ modem
• QDSP4000™ and QDSP5000™ high-performance digital signal processors (DSP)
• 528 MHz ARM11 Jazelle™ Java® hardware acceleration
• Support for BREW® and Java applications
• Qcamera™: Up to 6.0 megapixel digital images
• Qtv™: Playback at 30 fps VGA
• Qcamcorder™: Record at 30 fps VGA
• Q3Dimension™: Up to 4 million triangles per second, and 133 million depth-tested, textured 3D pixels per second fill rate
• gpsOne® position-location assisted-GPS (A-GPS) solution
• Support for Linux® and other third-party operating systems
• Digital audio support for MP3, aacPlus™ and Enhanced aacPlus
• Integrated Mobile Digital Display Interface (MDDI), Bluetooth® 1.2 baseband processor and WiFi support

So all of these features should be available in your future GPhone, in addition to what Android will provide as software solution. Until the first handset will be available for public in the second half of 2008, the only way to try Android’s applications is using the emulator.

Popularity: 35%