Android at Barcelona.

Android on the march again. At the Barcelona GSMA show several Android prototypes were on display. Like very geeky raw iron. Wired has the full story here. –

Several companies at GSMA are showing prototypes running the Google-backed open-source Android operating system (aka the “GooglePhone”), and judging by the crowd reaction, these “phones” are the hit of the show. The one above is Qualcomm’s effort, and there are also examples from ARM, NEC, Texas Instruments, Wind River, and Marvell.

It’s not fair to laugh at the huge circuit boards: These are design prototypes and will of course be shrunk down to a fraction of this size. But despite the fugly appearance, these Android phones are the buzz of the show. At the NEC booth, the guy pointed me straight past the other boards saying, “This one is the Android. That’s the only one anybody is interested in.”

Qualcomm’s 7201a has both ARM 11 and ARM 9 chips, built-in GPS, a couple of DSPs (digital signal processors) and 2D and 3D graphics acceleration. In the short video clip below you can see the result. A spinning globe, which could one day couple with the GPS to make a mobile Google Earth. The second part shows NEC’s implemention browsing the web with the Webkit browser.

Right now the UI is clunky and slow, but the fact that so many manufacturers are already on board means that Android is already a success. Qualcomm plans to have a shipping hardware platform in the second half of the year.

With this level of work going on, Google has a decent chance of making this happen. This many primary suppliers working on the OS indicates a good deal of interest.

Google, once you have Android off the group modify you Google Gadgets API to work on the phone. That way you can leverage all the effort in that body of work for Google Phone. Match made in heaven.

If geeky hardware with the wrappers off is your thing follow the link below for plenty of pictures.

Linky.