Smarten up, get to know your smartphone...
Android is worth a review as it is currently the fastest growing of all mobile phones and tablet PCs operating systems. Boasting functionality that has proven popular with hundreds of thousands of people, with access to over 250,000 apps and big names such as HTC, Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson and Motorola producing Android Smartphones, you're sure to find your perfect smartphone.
Android Market
The Android Market currently houses more than 250,000 games and applications and boasts an incredible 4.5 billion downloads since launch. With everything from Angry Birds to eBay, you're sure to find an app to do pretty much anything; whether that's remembering to buy milk on your way home from work or building and maintaining your very own country in a SimCity style simulation game. The beauty of Android is in the depth of customisation it allows, if you don't like one of the stock apps, you simply choose one of the many alternatives that the Android Market houses.
Google Integration
Being a Google produced OS, the obvious advantage is that Android has been built from the ground up to incorporate pretty much every Google service on offer and presents it in a seamless, user friendly interface. You're emails are pushed instantly to your phone, chat with friends using Google Talk, plan and schedule your life with the built in Calendar, synchronise and store your entire contact list in Google Contacts and connect with old friends on Google+, the new social network from the search giants. The list is pretty much endless and that's just the Google apps!
Open Source
With Android being an Open Source operating system, it means that any developer or manufacturer is free to add as much or as little extra functionality to the experience as they like. HTC offer their own 'skin' known as HTC Sense, which offers access to products such as HTC Hub, an area to get HTC approved ringtones, themes and skins to add that extra little touch to your phone. Samsung offer their TouchWiz UI, designed to clean, simple and fast whilst Sony Ericsson offer Timescape UI, offering incredible integration with social networking sites Twitter and Facebook.
Google Maps and Navigation
One of the biggest and probably the most popular feature of Android is the built in Google Maps, optimised to run perfectly on the Android platform with the added benefit of being able to not only plan every step of your journey from start to finish, but also to give you voice-guided navigation giving you turn by turn instructions to ensure you get to where you need to be.
Multi-tasking
Android offers a true multi-tasking experience, allowing you to run multiple apps simultaneously and switch between them effortlessly. With the advancements in mobile phone technology now housing dual-core processors in our Smartphones, multi-tasking is literally as seamless on a phone as it is on your laptop or computer at home. Browse the internet, fire up your Facebook and switch to your emails to read your incoming mail, and then simply switch back to any of your other apps that are running in the background.
Android Video
Samsung Galaxy S II Review
The Samsung Galaxy S 2 is the latest and fastest Android handset that Samsung have produced to date. The Original Samsung Galaxy S i9000 was hugely successful for Samsung, so much so that Google used the hardware as the base for the Nexus S; an honour in the world of Android phones... Click here to read full review.
Android phones are available from the following manufacturers
