My Android phone

I guess by this time most of you are familiar or heard of what android is... if not: it is an open source OS for mobile devices(phones, tablets..) developed by google, based on Linux. Recently I bought my first smartphone with android OS. Till date, I hated to buy the expensive mobile phones for many reasons... but nevertheless this time I bought this one for some reason. I am surprised with the things my phone(moto defy) with Android offer.

Phone:

It has a 800MHz processor( this was typical of computers when i was in high school ) ,I just realized that i could overclock it to 1.2Ghz easily for performance, it has 512MB RAM , 2 GB internal memory and extra memory from sd card... It has fairly large screen 3.7 inches and is very sensitive to touch no sticks and pens , typing on screen with fingers is very easy. pinch on screen to zoom in or zoom out... Like modern generation phones it has a camera, GPS , accelerometers to detect the orientation of phone, internet through wifi or 3G or 2G... and attractive battery life for about a day! my phone unlike other phones is water, dust resistant upto 1m and to some extent scratch resistant on the screen.....

Coming back to interesting part of story: Android OS

In 2005 Google took over the startup company Android Inc, which by then started to develop lightweight Linux for mobiles. They slowly developed open source java libraries for accessing hardware which anyone could use to create applications on device. Google took the task of integrating its services like gmail, gtalk, maps, youtube(flash) ,new google voice(voip) ...and some other minimum capabilities like playing mp3's and some other open source video formats onto the OS,device. They released first mobile based on Android early last year through HTC with a google branding. Slowly user/external community started developing the applications for android using the libraries google provided. Google provided a space, called market(http://www.android.com/market/) for people to release their tiny softwares(called apps). Some are free, some are ad supported and some are paid, but not more than 3-4$ in general. This whole strategy has been super successful for google compared to ...iphone or rim... or any existing framework.

Finally I will give overview some interesting apps, I never thought before that such things could be possible...

Some interesting Apps:

Barcode Scanner: This app uses mobile camera to scan barcodes on products, and based on your GPS location will tell the nearby/online prices for the same product. This application is also used to install new android apps, it has become a norm to embed download links for android in a barcode. well, when it scans commercial products the database is not perfect but works good for established brands...

Voip(sipdriod , skype) : This app lets you to make cheap internet voip calls using mobile, with all your phone book contacts... as if it was normal phone call. you could do this through skype or any other voip provider.

signal scanner : This one surprised me a lot, it can tell near by cell phone towers in a radar and which direction you would get more signal... it can also tell same thing about Wireless hotspots. It was bit weak in identifying exact location of wireless hotspots but it was withing their order of accuracy10m.

gaming: most mobiles are capable of doing 3D gaming to an extent.

some google apps
Maps, Navigation : Most of android phones come with a gps and google maps compliments it by providing maps, street views........

voice commands/search and engine: mobile has a voice engine and can convert to text what you speak or search based on voice, or take voice commands. it is decent for my accent, say 25% right.

update 12 Jan:

let me add a very interesting app here : called google googles
check out yourself

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdftOloAH9Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kOotqpJyUg