amobilegeek

Perspective is a beautiful thing. However, we often forget that there are different lenses with which to view the world. In my case, I have been reading about technology and mobile phones for a long time. I want to spend a minute clarifying some terms which I hear misused regurlarly. I use these terms thinking everyone has uniform infomation - but that so often is not the case.

1. Android - This is the official name of Google's operating system. An operating system is software, in other words, its not physical. It's the brains of the computer. One unique thing to note, Google's software is open-source. In other words, engineers spent years coding this piece of software and then, Google gives it away for free. The code is available for anyone to download and make modifications as they see fit. Its like renting a half furnished apartment for free. To make it your home, you need to spend some effort modifying it to your likes, but the majority of the work is done.

2. Droid - You can thank Motorola for obfuscating the first term, Android, with a marketing campaign aimed at promoting its first physical phone running the above mentioned Android. Some people refer to any phone running Google's Android as a droid phone. While technically correct, it is confusing without any additional information.

3. Droid 2 / X / Pro - This is what Motorola considers its line of "Droid" phones (think $100M marketing campaign). I must give credit to Motorola for embedding in our minds that droid = motorola and not Google. I guess that what $100M buys you. Kudos.

4. HTC - HTC is a taiwanese company that manufactures physical phones (the hardware); it competes directly with Motorola. Things start to get muddled because HTC also makes software, Sense UI. HTC owes its success to its impressive manufacturing capabilities. HTC is also software agnostic and white label friendly. Said in another way, they build phones for whoever wants phones built. They dont care if the phone runs microsoft, google, or some combination of the aforementioned with its own recipe of software.

5. Sense UI (user interface) - We said that Google makes software* and HTC makes hardware and sometimes software. HTC uses Android and furnishes its apartment to try and sell as many phones as they can. So HTC makes its own software and its phones run on Google Android. Think of it as permanently wearing 3-D glasses (excluding the headaches from prolonged use). Sense UI is meant to enhance the experience of using Google's software. Certain things POP out at you, while others are more easily organized.

6. Nexus One* - I was not telling the whole truth in the last paragraph. Google also makes hardware. Or at least they did. They released the Nexus One, a phone made by Google, although technically built by HTC. Even more confusing, huh.

I think that is enough for today - if anyone has items they want to add to the list, just submit a comment and I'll update the post.