From Snail mail to email to radio paging to MMS and online networking, communication has come a long way and connectivity is everything today. I can't believe that it's now more than 10 years since i tested an application on Windows CE as a test analyst. Many years and multiple versions later, the silent war to gain foothold on the mobile operating system space led almost all the big names come up with their smart OS for the mobile applications. My career took me into the application testing domain more specifically on banking ERP and extended ERP. I recently, out of curiosity and more out of nostalgia looked up to this segment to catch up on advances in the past 10 years and was amazed to see that this market is hotter than ever and the Holy Grail for phone manufacturers and web content providers is precisely to eliminate the need for a separate mobile web space so that users can have everything on a microbrowser with a "m." prefixed before every website url. In these years, i have graduated to using a Blackberry for office emails and a Samsung for my personal calls and web browsing. Both these companies are big time into mobile operating systems with RIM, the makers of BlackBerry coming out with their v5.0 of the mBrowser which is touted to have a vastly improved internet browser. Samsung, on the other hand are incubating their smartphone OS 'Bada' . Nokia, the pioneers in mobile telephony for a while now are flashing their Symbian OS, the latest version called 'SymbianU^3' through which Nokia hopes its N Series will take on the deluge of Android devices from Apple. Microsoft, not to be left behind has its 'Windows Phone 7' and goes one step ahead and promises better integration with dektop machines and web services! Nokia partnered with Intel to come up with the 'Meego', the best part of which is that it is a Linux based platform for high end mobile phones and netbooks.
The best is now here- I, for one, thought Apple's popular iPhone was the undisputed leader in smartphone technology until i read about Android OS from Google. Now, anything new from Google should grab headlines and primetime in the opensource world (My blog is served fresh courtesy Google and of course thanks to the open source movement), which means the Android OS is available to a multitude of device manufacturers since it is open source. Remember the last time an opensource OS created such a furor (yes, Linux). The Android OS also supports touch screen devices -the rage amongst mobile users. A recent review i was reading also suggested that it supports capacitive multi-touch (pinch to zoom) technology. With a company like Google, it is hard to compete and reasons such as the email software on Android is from Google (i haven't heard anyone complain about GMail yet), Android uses the Chrome lite browser which again is efficient. And, if you have heard or used apps such as facebook, Google Sky Map,Evernote, Google Goggles and Layar - you know what i am talking about, these are all a part of the top apps already compatible and readied for the Android OS. Everything on the web will soon be a part of Google or managed by Google. Open source software does come with its fair share of cribs, devices for sure will need to be upgrade ready as the hardware may not just yet support it. I am already sold on the newest operating system from my favorite company - Android OS 2.1 from Google and just can't wait to lay hands on a device that runs on opensource OS - quite a journey when we tested evaluation versions of Windows CE.
And today, what does one need? A Google account!
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