Here's a video of Andy Rubin, the Android head honcho at Google,
showing off a build of the new mobile OS on a touchscreen phone to the BBC's
Darren Waters. Rubin showed the current state of the Android platform and
it's looking swell - for the most part. Perhaps, the most impressive is the
Street View mode of Google Maps, pulled down to the 3G prototype reference phone
running at a relatively mild 300MHz. The 3D processing capabilities of this
particular smartphone appear to be quite good as well, being able to render
Quake at a full 30 frames per second. This is particularly impressive when you
consider that the processor is only half as fast as the one included in the
iPhone. It's not Crysis, but Quake looks pretty good!
That reference design, which may or may not reflect hardware that will run Android in the future, had another interesting feature: a trackball, currently seen on Danger Hiptops and Blackberries.