Unsurprisingly, the question came up once again at Google I/O last week. During a panel with a bunch of engineers on the Chrome team, it was one of the first questions asked. The response? “It’s not something we’re talking about right now.” Ouch.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” the engineered continued. Okay…

Another team member, probably realizing those answers sounded both cryptic and harsh, chimed in. “The important thing at the end of the day is to make browsers better. While it’s not strictly Chrome, we share a lot of code with the Android team. We’ll share more over time.” Okay, that’s better. Still, a bit odd.

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There is a story on Reuters that Google topples Nokia from smartphones top spot, its has 222 Diggs, and probably same amount of comments like people have no idea that Android is going to be the no.1 in the world… That hype behind the story is totally weird…

I’m not surprised about that because I knew that Android is going to top the world in a short time because it’s a smartphone operating system not entirely a phone which means that any company can take Android and release an endless number of phones with Android and no one can stop them since they ship a good device…

It’s totally different when talk about a single phone shipped from only one company with the same design and features and absolutely the same price… I mean here the legendary Apple’s iPhone… You cannot say that Android is better than the iPhone or the iPhone is better because the experience with Android is with the operating system not the device but with the iPhone you are talking about an experience with software and hardware…

I take car manufacturers as an example, do you see a lot of Ferrari cars in your country??? If yes then which car is better a Ferrari or Suzuki??? my answer is, both are great but the Ferrari is way better, powerful, fast and surely fancy but Suzuki is good too and there is a lot of Suzuki cars with different prices and equipment it’s more affordable than Ferrari… I see the same here with smartphones…

I think that Android is going to be the no.1 platform in the world (If it’s not already) and iPhone, Nokia and BlackBerry will not catch up with Android and they are stupid if they are fighting to gain the lead…

Hardware
In terms of appearance, I think the X10 is pretty polarizing… But there are some issues with it: first, the front of the device is glossy plastic… Often, glossy plastic looks good when it’s new and clean — in pictures, anyhow — but a few smudges and a brush with your car keys in your pocket later, it can easily be transformed into a war-scarred hellscape… What’s more, holding the X10 back-to-back with the Nexus One quickly makes you appreciate the HTC phone’s superior materials, it simply feels more solidly-constructed, and that’s something that can make a big difference when you’re buying a cellphone for somewhere around 30,000 rupees…

Secondly with a 4-inch full wide VGA display, the X10 is big, very nearly approaching HD2 territory… That’s not a problem for me with my huge-hands, but friends with more diminutive statures specifically called out the X10 as being a hassle to hold… Around back, the X10′s battery cover is made of a lovely, high-quality soft touch material if its the black color…If you get the white one then its again a cheap looking glossy plastic cover… The phone clocks in at 13mm thick, not the thinnest on the market (the HD2 is an astounding 11mm, for example) but thin enough to make you feel good… No one’s going to accuse this of being a portly device, rest assured…

Around the sides, you find all the buttons and connectors you expect, including power and both micro-USB and 3.5mm headphone jacks at the top, volume and two-stage camera controls on the right, and the typical menu, home, and back buttons below the screen up front… The micro-USB port is covered with a flap, which improves the aesthetic appearance of the upper edge of the device but probably serves little practical function, makes the daily task of charging more of a chore than it needs to be, and risks being broken off with repetitive use…

About the Camera
At 8.1 megapixels, the X10 represents just about the highest-res cam you can find on an Android phone today… I found that the zoom was quite good (it’s all digital though) and the pictures were relatively blur free despite the fact that I was tracking objects that were moving quite fast…

Touchscreen
As you may or may not know, the X10 features a large 4″ touchscreen… It is an excellent size for watching videos or playing games on the go… But it lacks the responsiveness of an iPhone… Have to double tap sometimes to open applications… Sony could have made it more sensitive and responsive…

Software
The X10 is not just any Android phone, it’s also the first to introduce Sony Ericsson’s rather comprehensive Android skin, a package we’d first heard of in the middle of last year under the codename “Rachael”. One of the complaints that I have read about online is that the X10 only comes with Android 1.6 even though there are more recent versions… I was assured that it is guaranteed that the X10 will be updated to at least 2.1 by end of September… The two nice tweaks Sony made to Android 1.6 are Timescape and Mediascape…

One of the main issues i faced with the phone was jerkiness… Despite the amazingly fast 1GHz Snapdragon core that’s aboard, portions of the interface feel barely quicker than any other low end Android phone… It’s the same issue with Nexus One… I’m hoping it’s something Google and Sony Ericsson can tighten up over time through software updates…

Conclusion
High-powered Android devices are still surprisingly difficult to come by, enev though its nearly end of 2010 now… Tthe X10 certainly joins that elite team on the wings of its gigahertz-class Snapdragon core and gorgeous 854 x 480 display that clocks in at a whopping four inches — a size that bests every other Google-powered phone on the market today…

1. Android Marketplace: Google must add a couple of sections like Top Apps, Staff Picked Apps, What’s New and also enhance the update processes to make it compete with the App Store…

2. Touch: There is noway that you can compare an Android phone touchscreen to that of an iPhone… Touch must be improved for sure or at least Google must address the issue if it’s a software or hardware problem…

3. Multitasking: Android multitasking is confusing, that’s because Android keep processes running in the background giving them a short time before killing them based on “You may need this” idea… I think that every Android app must add “Exit” button to the app menu to let users decide either to kill or to keep a particular process running in the background…

4. Networks: One of the annoying issues I was facing with Android is the need to setup the GPRS connection manually because Android do not get the network info automatically… what makes the problem even harder is when I visited the company and they told me that they do not know or support Android yet… The story becomes even worst when you travel, you don’t know how to configure a connection or even the number to call customer support… iPhone handles all GPRS, 3G and cellular data networks automatically…

Android is great, promising and absolutely powerful if and only if they keep enhancing and updating it. Android is good but still need a lot of work and enhancements to go through the same track of iPhone, not to copy it but to provide us better features than the iPhone.

Posted from BlackBerry.

Google today released Translate for Animals on the Android Market, marking the groundbreaking app that finally lets us humans communicate with our two-, three- and four-legged brethren…

The revolutionary applications — which is free, despite the centuries of development time — translates the speech of cats, dogs, birds, rabbits, Guinea pigs, hamsters, tortoises, horses, chickens, sheep, donkeys and pigs. Support for snakes, goats, bison and wildebeests is expected in a future update, slated for sometime in the the second half of 2010…

If you visit Google, they have a video explaining just how the Translate for Animals Android App works…

There is also a tour on it…

Have a look at its press release and blog article….

Looks like its Adobe’s reply to Steve Job’s comment that “They are lazy”… This move is like a knockout punch for Apple as there tablet(iPad) has no support for flash…

We’re a community, not a company, owned by members not any one entity. — Symbian

I think the move comes seeing the increase in the popularity of likes of Android OS from Google and the iPhone OS from Apple who had slowly started stealing the limelight from Symbian…

But I seriously think Symbian is way late to gain back its popularity here… Should have released its code long time ago..

• Yeah, it’s $530 unsubsidized. Google’s not going to be selling the phone at cost, like so many people considered. They’re not going to save us from the “making money off of hardware” culture we’ve got right now, so this is basically just another Android handset, albeit a really good one
• If you want it subsidized, you’ll have to sign up for a 2 year mandatory contract and pay $180 for the phone
• There’s only one rate plan: $39.99 Even More + Text + Web for $79.99 total
• Existing customers cannot keep their plan if they want a subsidized phone; they have to change to the one plan, and this only applies to accounts with one single line
• If that doesn’t fly with you, you have to buy the $530 unlocked version—this actually might save you money over two years if you already have a cheap plan
• Family plans, Flexpay, SmartAccess and KidConnect subscribers must buy the phone unlocked and unsubsidized for $530
• You can only buy five Nexus One phones per Google account
• There is language in the agreement of shipping outside the US
• Google will sell it at google.com/phone, which explains what they were doing with that page a few weeks ago
• Google will still call it the Nexus One apparently, and not the Google Phone

This story originally appeared on Gizmodo.

Google’s Mobile blog says staff are “dogfooding” the device “We recently came up with the concept of a mobile lab, which is a device that combines innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android to experiment with new mobile features and capabilities, and we shared this device with Google employees across the globe. This means they get to test out a new technology and help improve it.”

Although some blogs and magazines have confidently suggested the Nexus One will be launched in January, bear in mind there has been no official announcement, just a lot of speculation. But it is starting to look as though Google might be serious.

Google Goggles matches a photo you take with your Android phone with images in – where else? – Google’s data centers. If a match can be made, Goggles provides you with information about the object you just snapped. It also includes text-recognition capabilities so that you can, as an example in an introductory video demonstrates, scan a business card, and move the card’s info into your Android address book.

Google Goggles works with phones running Android 1.6 and higher (sorry, iPhone users) ;)