After almost a year of negotiations, filing for approvals, and all the legal shenanigans that corporations must go through for a huge transaction to be sealed and done, Google and Motorola have finally got the last “blessing” they needed from the Chinese authorities.

It should come as no surprise therefore that Motorola Mobility’s acquisition has been very quickly made official, with Google finally paying that $40.00 per share in cash agreed a long time ago. Both Google and Motorola officials have announced that they are glad the deal has been closed and it’s now time to look towards the future of the new Moto.

Sanjay Jha, Motorola’s former CEO and the man who revived the company’s Mobile Devices business a few years back, has elegantly stepped down from his leading position, but will continue to work with Google “to help ensure a smooth transition”.

Jha’s replacement will be Dennis Woodside, the former President of Google’s Americas region. Woodside was selected to become the new Motorola CEO ever since February, when the Google-Motorola merger was approved in the US and Europe, but wasn’t technically able to fulfill any duties in his new position until now.

The new CEO’s resume is pretty impressive and, according to the official press release, he and his team have brought Google’s revenue from $10.8 billion to $17.5 billion in less than three years. His latest assignment at Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s company was handling Google’s Sales and Operations in the America, but he has worked and supervised business all around the world, from Africa to Europe, and from America to the Middle East.

Dennis Woodside’s new managerial team at Motorola is itself very impressive and will include former executives from companies like Amazon, Nokia, Visa or NVIDIA, as well as members of the Motorola Mobility’s executive team from before the merger.

Regina Dugan, former director of DARPA, is probably the most recognizable name from Woodside’s new team, but Mark Randall, Scott Sullivan, Gary Briggs, Marshall Brown and Iqbal Arshad will themselves play a very important role in Motorola’s development and progress over the next few years.

And talking about the future progress of Moto, we should tell you that Google’s officials have not announced any exact plans or projects just yet. However, the possibility of Motorola’s hardware department being sold to Huawei or any other company seems to have become more unlikely than ever, as Larry Page himself said that “It’s a great time to be in the mobile business, and I’m confident that the team at Motorola will be creating the next generation of mobile devices that will improve lives for years to come.”

Dennis Woodside, Motorola Mobility’s new CEO, has made a couple of interesting statements as well, saying that “ our aim is simple: to focus Motorola Mobility’s remarkable talent on fewer, bigger bets, and create wonderful devices that are used by people around the world”.

Could one of that “wonderful devices” be a Nexus running Android Jelly Bean, as WSJ’s rumor stated a few days ago? We don’t know yet, but we are happy that the legal madness surrounding Motorola’s acquisition has finally been put to an end. As for Google’s future plans for Moto, we should wait, see and hope for the best, shouldn’t we?

NEXT: Motorola Exec: Motorola Plans for 2012 Will Not Change After Google Acquisition

Google’s Acquisition of Motorola Mobility Finally Approved China approves Google’s acquisition of Motorola, as long Android stays free for at least 5 years

Following the approval that Google had received from US and European regulators for the acquisition of Motorola Mobility, the last big hurdle before the finalization of the buyout was the blessing from the Chinese authorities.

It looks like the acquisition plan can finally be completed, as Google announced over the weekend that the $12.5 billion deal has been approved, on one condition: Google has to keep the Android operating system open and free for other phone makers, for the next five years.

Responding to the positive feedback from the Chinese government, Google spokeswoman Niki Fenwick said that the company looks forward to closing the deal, which will see Google gaining control over Motorola Mobility. The costliest acquisition in Google’s history might pave the way for a plethora of Nexus devices coming out from Motorola. Google is still in cahoots with Samsung – for the next Nexus phone – and Asus for the first Nexus tablet, but as WSJ informed us, we might see many more Nexus devices (including from Moto) this fall.

It’s worth mentioning that gaining a hardware unit from the takeover is probably just the cherry on top of the patents cake. Motorola, after all, owns more than 17,000 patents and 7,500 patent applications. That’s quite an impressive list of potential weapons for Google to use against rivals in future legal battles.

Concerns about the possibility of Google giving Motorola special preference is something that the Chinese government has picked up as well. Hence, they wanted assurance from Google that it will keep Android free for the next five years and that’s what the Chinese have received, despite the fact that Google has never suggested otherwise. Still, the merger hasn’t failed to make some manufacturers feel uncomfortable at the prospect of being relegated to second rate customers.

Motorola, on the other hand, is a happy camper and is eager to close the multi-billion deal this week, says Jennifer Weyrauch-Erickson, the company’s spokeswoman.

NEXT: Google’s Acquisition of Motorola Mobility Finally Approved

Motorola Exec: Motorola Plans for 2012 Will Not Change After Google Acquisition Motorola to replace Google with Baidu on its China-bound handsets, launches SHOP4APPS app store

Remember when Eric Schmidt said that “By the summer of 2012, the majority of the televisions you see in stores will have Google TV embedded in it.”? It doesn’t look like that’s the case so far, and probably won’t be for a while. But LG has just demoed a very impressive TV that runs the Google TV OS, with the help of a dual core processor, that handles 3D as well.

Is Google TV finally ready to take over the market then? I doubt it, and I blame Google for that. While I think Google has learned a lot over the past few years about the consumer market, and they are still learning fast, that doesn’t change the fact that they are still “not there yet”, at least in some regards.

Take Google TV for example. When every set top box on the market was priced from $70 (Roku) to $200 at most (Boxee Box), Google comes out with no experience in this market, almost no content deals, and with software that didn’t look very polished, and wants to sell its first set top box, the Logitech Revue, for $300. Even Apple was selling theirs for $99 (although more limited software wise).

First off, you can’t try selling consumers a product that costs a few hundred dollars with software that isn’t fully ready or doesn’t have enough access to content to justify its price. It’s one thing to pay $300 for something and get access to everything you want, and it’s quite another to pay $300 to get access to Youtube on that device (and granted, a few more channels and Amazon’s video service). The point remains that the value just wasn’t there.

But why did this product cost so much? I still ultimately blame Google for the cost, because they were the ones launching the initial product, and they most definitely had a say in how it works and what specs it has. But other than that, the two biggest factors were Logitech and Intel.

Logitech was at fault because I believe they tried the same old “early adopter pricing” tactic, so, in a way, they tried to rip-off the early adopters with high prices, by being the first one in the market with Google TV. The second one was Intel with its Atom CE CPU, that definitely took the biggest chunk out of the pricing of the components, which of course influenced the final retail price in a major way.

LG’s Google TV might change the game

I think Google has finally put some pieces of the puzzle together though. For instance, the new Google TV from LG has a much better remote, with a keyboard on the back. The new gizmo provides a much better experience than the clunky full keyboard from Logitech, or the weird keyboard from Sony that looked like something from the 80′s. It’s still not perfect, though, and I don’t understand why there has to be a “mouse pointer” on a TV. That doesn’t make sense to me – it’s a waste of effort to move the pointer around, when there’s already a much simpler way to interact with the UI.

But other than the user experience (which I think has been greatly improved), and the fact that the new TVs and set top boxes might finally use ARM chips, the Google TV doesn’t do anything so great that it feels like a revolution.

I’ve been hoping that Google will start promoting Google TV as a gaming platform, so that it revolutionizes the console market, through cheap $100 ARM-powered consoles/set top boxes. Or they could just come built-in with all new TVs (although that means that you’d be stuck with the same chip for 5-10 years). But I still see no hint from Google that it’s going to actively promote it’s TV business like that. It’s more of an afterthought for them right now.

Video-chatting is also something they’ve never really tried to promote with Google TV, and I’m sure Apple will promote it heavily with their upcoming TVs. Expect the emotional ads with family members that interact with each other from the couch, and so on. I’ll be very disappointed if Apple’s TV will become a lot more popular than the Google TV, even though Google TV will have had a 2 year head-start over Apple.

But maybe that’s what both Google and its partners need in order to wake up and do it right, and, hopefully, before the Apple TV becomes too popular.

NEXT: LG to Announce a Google TV Device at CES. Is Samsung Next?

LG to launch a Google TV in the US by the end of May BOOM! Android Market Becomes Google Play Store, along with Google Music and Google Ebookstore [Updated]

Traditionally in the Android development cycle, major versions have launched at the end of the year (exception being Gingerbread/Honeycomb). According to the Wall Street Journal, Android Jelly Bean should launch this year, “by Thanksgiving”.

Will this be Android 5.0 or another version? That depends on Google’s plans for their I/O developer event happening in June. Andy Rubin’s team has two options: one, launch an Android 4.1 version with some improvements at I/O (and call it Jelly Bean), and then give a new name to Android 5.0. Two, use the event to showcase upcoming features of Android 5.0 Jelly Bean, and release it this fall.

Now, the rumor in WSJ says that Google is getting five manufacturers (probably Samsung, HTC, Motorola, Sony and LG – no love for Huawei, Google?) to release “Nexus devices”, all at the same time, this fall. How is this possible? Well, Google plans to give all of them early access to the next major version of Android, much like Microsoft does with Windows and WP7 manufacturers.

Google plans to launch the next version of Android with all of them at once , with some less important manufacturers launching a little later.

So what does this mean for us, the users? It means that we get to choose from at least 5 phones and maybe some tablets, too (some manufacturers will choose to release both a phone and a tablet), so our choices for stock Android devices will greatly improve. Even better, they will all be available from day one. That means that, if you don’t like a particular Nexus device, you have several others to choose from, and you won’t have to wait many more months until other devices appear.

This deal means that stock devices will flood the market. Also, manufacturers will have early access to the Android code, meaning that they will also be able to upgrade their skins faster and  launch new devices faster. However, the first devices will still be only stock Android. And Google should make sure of that through a formal agreement.

According to WSJ, the Nexus devices will most likely be sold through Google’s Play Store in US, Europe and Asia, which again is a great move for Google, because they’ll be able to wrestle control over Android from carriers. It won’t hurt carriers too much, because at least in US, most people still buy phones through carrier subsidies, but it should work very well in markets in Europe and Asia.

Overall, this is a very smart move from Google, that will benefit themselves, the consumers, and even the manufacturers.

NEXT: HTC Negotiates with Google for Potential Jelly Bean Nexus

Asus Hoping to Be the First Manufacturer to Offer Jelly Bean Devices BGR: HTC competitor to the Galaxy Note, multiple Droid RAZR models coming this fall at Verizon

But why did Google choose Java anyway? Well, there weren’t that many popular choices that were also in good standing with developers. In Additionally, Google  had quite a lot of developers that were using Java because they need it for their own infrastructure. Since it was also open source, they decided to fork the Java Virtual Machine, and create the Dalvik VM. This is not exactly unheard of in the world of open source software, and in fact, it’s not even the first time this happened to Oracle since they bought Sun.

For example, the people who made OpenOffice got angry with Oracle’s greed, and forked it into LibreOffice. Usually, this is perfectly normal behavior in the open source world. It’s not like that would stop Oracle from suing Google anyway, which is why Google may take issue with Java right now.

Moving forward, Google is already considering alternatives for Java, such as their own language Go v1.0, which they just finished recently. From what developers are saying, it’s one of the best languages out there right now. Here’s why Go was created:

“Go was born out of frustration with existing languages and environments for systems programming. Programming had become too difficult and the choice of languages was partly to blame. One had to choose either efficient compilation, efficient execution, or ease of programming; all three were not available in the same mainstream language. Programmers who could were choosing ease over safety and efficiency by moving to dynamically typed languages such as Python and JavaScript rather than C++ or, to a lesser extent, Java.

Go is an attempt to combine the ease of programming of an interpreted, dynamically typed language with the efficiency and safety of a statically typed, compiled language. It also aims to be modern, with support for networked and multicore computing. Finally, it is intended to be fast: it should take at most a few seconds to build a large executable on a single computer. To meet these goals required addressing a number of linguistic issues: an expressive but lightweight type system; concurrency and garbage collection; rigid dependency specification; and so on. These cannot be addressed well by libraries or tools; a new language was called for.”

Go does sound impressive, but unfortunately that’s not the biggest issue with moving Android to Go, or any other language. Doing this will disrupt a lot of things not only for Google but also for the entire Android ecosystem. Android developers will now have to learn Go, if Java is deprecated. Google will need to find a way to make Go a cross-platform language like the Dalvik VM, so it works for other chip architectures.  Finally, they will have to do some major rewriting for Android to support Go as well.

In the long run it definitely sounds like something that would be ideal for Google since they’d have full control over what happens with the language. Since it’s such a friendly language they might even get developers to be interested in learning it, just like the vast majority of iOS developers had to learn Objective-C to make iOS apps. But in the short term this transition would definitely be painful for Google and everyone else. So right now they might be considering it, and even doing experiments with it, but I doubt we’ll see anything come out of it in the next few years. Of course, this all remains to be seen pending a win in the lawsuit with Oracle.

NEXT: Jury: Google infringed Java copyright, but we’re not sure it’s worth a $1 billion penalty

Oracle to ask around $100 million from Google over the Android / Java lawsuit. It’s a no-deal for Google and Oracle, patent dispute case heads to court on April 16

Now that we’ve (almost) closed the big book of rumors on the Samsung Galaxy S3, it’s time to play the guessing game on what device Google and Samsung are working on together!

We know that it’s highly likely that Samsung will be Google’s choice for the next Nexus phone, which traditionally comes out at  the end of the year. But the latest report from Sam Mobile might provide us a clue about something even bigger. The website reports that Adam Green, a known ROM developer (maker of Oxygen), has found some lines of code on Google’s Git Repository that seem to lift the curtain on a next-gen Android device that Google and Samsung are collaborating on.

The problem is we’re not sure if the code belongs to a tablet or a phone. From the kernel code, the device will sport the Exynos 5250 processor, a Mali GPU (vithar), a s5K4e5 camera, a s5k6a3 camera, a wm8994 sound chip, and a S6E8AB0 display with 1280 x 800 resolution. These various components could very well belong to a smartphone, but we can’t rule out that the device is actually a tablet.

The Eyxnos 5250, also known as the Exynos 5 Dual, will mark Samsung’s leap to the Cortex-A15 architecture. Like the Exynos 4 Quad, however, it will still use a 32nm HKMG technology. Back in March, Samsung’s Senior Manager at Mobile Marketing Massimiliano Villani said that the Exynos 5250 will be “the first processor able to natively drive a WQXGA display.”

So, what’s the chance of Samsung letting Google use its considerably advanced Exynos 5250 processor in the next Nexus phone? Let’s just say that manufacturers are lining up to grab that coveted spot, with the Nexus tablet already reserved for Asus. So yeah, it is not an unlikely proposition.

We know that there’s still a limited amount of information out there, but speculation is part of the fun of waiting for the next “wow” phone or tablet, right? Do you think that the code refers to the next Nexus phone? Or will Google surprise us and release a couple of Nexus tablets?

NEXT: Samsung Exynos 5250 on a Galaxy Tab?

Exynos 5250 is Samsung’s First Super Fast SoC Processor Samsung rumored to sell the upcoming Exynos 4412 SoC to other OEMs

Understanding the importance of creating a complete and accessible ecosystem for Android users, Google recently rebranded and transformed the Android Market to Google Play. Under that one gigantic Play Store umbrella, users can now download not just apps, but also music, video, books, and even buy a phone.

Since people seem to be fixated on comparing the number of apps available on a certain platform, Google and its competitors still like to flaunt numbers every now and then, just to show who’s boss. So it’s quite puzzling to see Google not throwing the confetti to celebrate the 15 billion app downloads milestone, which was reached several weeks ago. It was only a couple of days ago that the achievement has even been confirmed by the company to TechCrunch.

15 billion – that might seem like a lot of zeros, but Google’s performance hasn’t quite reached Apple’s level yet. Back in March, Apple announced that over 25 billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store, by more than 315 million owners of iOS devices.  Since Cupertino passed the 15 billion downloads mark in July 2011, the App Store received an average of 1.25 billion downloads per month, compared to Google’s monthly average of 1 billion downloads.

If you’re interested to know just how many Android apps there are right now that you can download for your phone and tablet, according to Appbrain, there are more than 440,000 apps on Google Play as of May 10, of which 318,000 are free apps and the other 123,000 paid apps. Apple, meanwhile, has over 550,000 apps in its App Store as of March 2012, with 170,000 being iPad-specific.

Anyway, congrats to Google for reaching the 15 billion downloads milestone, and for soon passing half a million apps available (pre-emptive response: yes, we also believe quality matters more than quantity). The latest figures are quite an achievement for a platform that only had 2,300 apps back in March 2009.

While it’s true that, in the past, developers have prioritized or focused exclusively on iOS devices, more and more popular apps, like Instagram, Flipboard and others, are finally making their way to Android. The introduction of carrier billing option should make Android platform even more attractive for devs.

NEXT: Google Applications Reaches 3 Billion Downloads and 350,000 Activations Each Day

Android Market – 10 Billion App Downloads So Far. Now, 1 Billion Downloads Per Month Android Market Hits the 400,000 Apps – Right behind Apple’s App Store

Nearly every Android smartphone user has suffered the irritation of knowing that a new version of Android has been released by Google, and they haven’t received it yet. Sometimes they never do.  Updates can often  take around six months to come, if they do at all. Why does this happen, and why does Google let it happen time and time again?

The bloatware process

Briefmobile The biggest cause of update delays which increases device-software fragmentation is not caused by Google, it is the fault of mobile phone carriers who install their bloatware.

Once Google has released a lightning fast, gorgeous new version of Android like Ice Cream Sandwich last year. The smartphone manufacturers then dirty it with their own bulky add-ons, and make a few tweaks here and there to help it run on a specific device. HTC adds HTC Sense, Samsung adds Touchwiz, and so forth, in addition to that and other cumbersome applications.

After the manufacturers are done (about 1-2 months), the software is passed on to the mobile carriers, who then add all of their custom software on top of the manufacturer’s. When I first got my Desire HD it was littered with HTC and T-Mobile applications I didn’t want or need, stealing up space, processor cycles, battery life, etc. Once the carriers are done putting on their bloatware and testing it out (3-4 months sometimes) the software is finally pushed to the devices the carriers and manufacturers deem ‘compatible’. Many devices do not receive software updates, even then they are perfectly capable of running the new Android builds…

The money-making racket that follows

Reuters

One of the ways manufacturers and carriers make money off of Google announcing software releases is to hold the software back and only allow it to be released on their newest devices. This ensures that existing customers who want the ‘newest and greatest’ software will be motivated to purchase a new phone which runs it. This shouldn’t be the case — existing customers should receive a prompt over-the-air update.

This is only sleazy marketing to help start initial sales of new devices. Most devices currently running Android 2.3 Gingerbread are perfectly capable of running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, the manufacturers and carriers just don’t want you to. This means that disgruntled customers like myself go and download custom ROM’s from the community which allow us to enjoy Ice Cream Sandwich, with the hassle of research and warranty busting that comes with it.

Google should put their foot down

All this bloatware and the delays of upgrades only hurts Android’s name and public perception, and the customers themselves. Google should lay down the line and give firm instructions on how software should be released to Android fans. It isn’t fair that Google make us a great new build, and the Scrooge-like manufacturers and carriers won’t release it on older phones just so they can make ever more money.

Google should start stating that if carriers and manufacturers continue to deliberately delay the release of Android, then those companies will be penalized by having to endure delays before receiving a new software build, while all their competitors already have it. That would certainly motivate carriers to distribute updates faster, since they can’t afford to fall behind.

Perhaps Google should put additions into Android to help networks out

I can see one of the viewpoints the carriers may have which causes them to hesitate releasing the newest Android builds.

When you look at sales records, networks are still having no trouble selling devices running Android 2.3 and in a lot of cases, Android 2.2. Why should they start making things more complicated for themselves by moving up to 4.0 when they’re already getting plenty of market share by selling the older stuff?

When you look at the new features in Ice Cream Sandwich, they’re all lovely additions for the user to enjoy, but offer no benefit to the network providers. It may be the case that, as well as Google being stricter with networks delaying Android releases, they should also do things to make releasing software upgrades worthwhile to the networks. After all, I can see why T-Mobile wouldn’t want to spend funds sending out a new build of Android 4.0 if it didn’t benefit them in any way.

Final Thoughts

Personally, I would be in favour of Google enacting a policy where carriers delaying releases invokes penalisation, as it would get the carriers into gear. With the popularity of Android right now, no carrier could say no and risk losing precious modification time with the next release of Android.

Do you think this is a good idea? Should Google release the newest builds of Android to companies who have shown their goodwill first? Did you want Ice Cream Sandwich as soon as it was announced, or were you happy to wait for carriers to make their additions?

NEXT: Google shares the Android wealth with carriers?

The Carriers Hate the iPhone (And Love Android) Google’s JB Queru calls out carriers for slowing down update rollouts

Well, who can honestly say that they didn’t see this one coming? In the case of Oracle vs Java, the jury has returned a mixed verdict that will not please either of the sides. Although the jury has found Google to be in the wrong by infringing Oracle-owned Java copyrights, a unanimous decision couldn’t be reached on whether Google’s use of the Java APIs can be considered ‘fair use’ or not.

Judge William Alsup, who oversees the case, said that the jury’s decision to fault Google’s use of the nine lines of the “rangeCheck” code (which are identical to Java code) will be of little help in determining the victor if it fails to conclude on the issue of fair use. Since the deadlock between the jury couldn’t be broken, even after the jurors received more deliberation time over the weekend, the judge decided to move on with the next stage of the trial.

There were four questions that the team of jurors, which consists of five men and seven women, had to answer. Two of the questions were whether or not Google had infringed Oracle documentation copyrights – it’s a no for this one – and whether the copying of code was significant enough to warrant a full-on actionable infringement. The latter is the question upon which the jury can’t seem to decide.

The partial verdict means that Google won’t have to give in to Oracle’s demand to pay $1 billion in damages, since the infringement might still be considered a minor one. Moving away from Oracle’s initial stance of demanding just statutory damages, the company’s legal team now says that Oracle is entitled to a portion of Android profits, as a result of the infringement of those nine lines of code.

Responding to the decision, Google said that “fair use and infringement are two sides of the same coin.” While Google looks forward to the decision of whether Java APIs are copyrightable or not, the search giant is certain that it will prevail. Given the result, Google has filed for a mistrial and a hearing of both sides is set to take place on May 10.

Meanwhile, Oracle is convinced that “the overwhelming evidence demonstrated that Google knew it needed a license and that its unauthorized fork of Java in Android shattered Java’s central write once run anywhere principle.”

The trial will now focus on the alleged violation by Google of another two Java patents. Bear in mind that the jury’s decision will only be used as deliberation points for the judge and the ruling will ultimately be issued by him.

NEXT: Oracle to ask around $100 million from Google over the Android / Java lawsuit.

Oracle vs Google trial starts today, both CEOs to testify as witnesses Calculated Cost for 700,000 Daily Android Activations Is $3.65 Billion According to Oracle

If you had fun with the images of that early prototype of a Google phone we showed you a couple of weeks ago, you should prepare yourselves for something even more “special” today. Developer Steven Troughton-Smith got his hands on the first ever “Android reference device” and we are now excited to show you a few high-resolution photos that document Android’s early days.

The Google Sooner, aka the HTC EXCA 300, wasn’t ever officially released, but it’s interesting to see how much head work Google managed to do between 2007, when this device was in the works, and October 2008, when the HTC Dream (or the T-Mobile G1) hit the market.

Tech specs and look

The Sooner was supposed to be powered by an OMAP 850 processor and feature 64 MB of RAM, as well as 64 MB of on-board memory. The LCD screen sported by the device didn’t support touch input and came with a “generous” 320 x 240 pixel resolution.

Other features included a 1.3 megapixel camera (that’s actually decent if you think about it) with video recording capabilities, a 2G radio, a mini-SD slot, a mini-USB port, a full Qwerty keyboard, a four-way d-pad, and four system buttons. WiFi and 3G connectivity were missing, but that doesn’t come as a surprise.

As for the phone’s design, I don’t know about you, but I can’t help smiling when I look at the photos below. However, Troughton-Smith does mention that the device felt “surprisingly light” and that the exterior “had a certain quality to it”, so if the Sooner wasn’t elegant (and it certainly wasn’t), at least it was solid, without being too bulky.

Software

While some of you might have a good laugh when looking at the exterior of the Google Sooner, we are more interested in the phone’s software. Built on May 15 2007, according to Troughton-Smith, the device runs a much earlier Android version than anything we’ve seen before.

As you may imagine, the fact that the Google Sooner didn’t support touch input made this early software build very different from Android’s first stock version. However, there are a number of other differences too, mostly when talking about the home screen and the phone’s pre-loaded apps.

In fact, the Google Sooner didn’t actually feature a home screen, as we know it these days. Instead, the phone’s primary interface consisted of a large (and pretty cool) clock and a pop-up Google search bar. As far as apps go, you had Google Talk, Gmail, a calculator, a calendar, a notepad, Google Maps, YouTube, Google Earth, and a bunch of other similar “programs” pre-installed on the device.

Sure, most of them were rudimentary and looked kind of ugly, to be honest (what’s up with the green Google Talk?), but for such an early smartphone, there were quite a few things to keep you busy. Unfortunately, there were also a few bugs here and there and neither Google Maps, nor YouTube ran smoothly for Troughton-Smith.

Was Sooner canceled because of the iPhone?

Aside from providing us with a sweet look back at Android’s childhood, Steven Troughton-Smith tries to explain the reasons why the Google Sooner was never shown to the public.

Troughton-Smith says that “it’s quite clear that Android was being designed to a completely different target before the iPhone was released” and that Apple’s gadget determined Google to change its perspective and step up its game a notch.

However, Diane Hackthorn, an employee of Google’s Android engineering group, describes Smith’s blog post as “misleading”. According to Hackthorn, the T-Mobile G1 and the Google Sooner “were basically the same” and the decision to drop Sooner was taken “well before the iPhone announcement”.

In cases like this, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle, but I, for one, don’t think it’s that important to know whether Google canceled the Sooner due to the iPhone or not. What is important, though, is that Android really has come a long way from its inception, and that mobile technology as a whole progressed tremendously in just a few short years.

You should also check out the following Android demo from November 2007. You can catch a glimpse of the Sooner in this clip, but you can also see a different and significantly more complex prototype, with a touchscreen and a “friendlier” interface. Have fun!

NEXT: Google’s Android to eclipse Nokia’s Symbian in 2012

Google Voice headed to Android (and BlackBerry) FCC Patents a Mysterious Device by Google