Click to View

A number technology companies - mostly chipmakers - are showing off Google’s Android mobile phone platform in prototype form at this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

Google spokesman Barry Schnitt explained to the AFP , "What is happening with Android today is that we are seeing a number of technology companies demonstrating how Android will operate on their technology on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress.”

As ARM’s Ian Drew put it to the BBC News, "It's really is a demonstration vehicle rather than a full phone." ARM is running several applications on its ‘gPhone’ prototype, though.

“What we are demonstrating on the Android platform is maps, browser, camera applications, multimedia, e-mail, and calendar—basically everything you'd expect on a mobile phone," Drew added. (Gizmodo’s posted a video of ARM’s Android prototype in action.)

Additional vendors demonstrating their Android-compatible wares include Marvell, Qualcomm, NEC, ST Microelectronics, and Texas instruments, which, while also showing off its Android prototype behind the scenes, is giving the public a chance to see the prototype in action.

Although this Barcelona may seem like Android’s coming-out party, the ‘gPhone’ isn’t the only mobile-Linux game in town this week.

At the show, the Mobile Linux foundation announced the signing up of a pair of major new members, Samsung and LG Electronics, at the conference as well. They are just a pair of seven vendors slated to show off 18 phones running on the foundation’s LiMo software.

Samsung, which announced it would support Android at the show, but not until 2009, has a LiMo-run phone, the SGH-i800, on display, as does LG, in a prototype form

Japan’s ACCESS and Europe’s Orange have also joined the LiMO foundation.

ACCESS has been developing and peddling its own Linux OS (the ACCESS Linux Platform) as the follow up to the Palm OS over the last couple of years. At the show, it introduced a Software Developer Kit and portal to help developers port their Palm OS Garnet apps to LiMo.

Orange plans to roll out the Samsung SGH-i800 later this year. The carrier is also a longtime partner with ACCESS on the mobile-Linux front.

ACCESS and Orange are working together to develop an Orange Application Package for ALP-based mobile phones. The aim of this package, which will run on top of ALP, is to enable device vendors to quickly develop ALP-based Orange Signature Devices.

In addition, back in December, ACCESS announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding with NTT DoCoMo to develop ALP-based smartphones.