At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, a large number of companies were demonstrating gadgets powered by Android — Google’s open-source operating system designed for smartphones and tablets. But while it’s designed for them, it’s by no means restricted to them; TVs, cars, and even a Polaroid digital camera were shown off, all of them powered by Android.
Here are some of the biggest announcements of brand-name Android gadgets made at this year’s CES:
New flagship smartphones
The latest sequel in the Droid line of Verizon smartphones, the Droid 4, was finally introduced at CES. Motorola, the manufacturer, bills it as the ” thinnest and most powerful 4G LTE QWERTY smartphone”, and it packs a five-row QWERTY slider despite being half an inch thick. It also has a 4G LTE wireless radio, which last year’s Droid 3 lacked.
Other Droid phones introduced include the Droid RAZR in Purple, and the Droid RAZR MAXX with an extended battery capacity. Meanwhile, Sony announced a new line of Xperia smartphones, including the 4G Xperia Ion. Both the Ion and the Droid 4 will be running Android 2.3 Gingerbread when they’re released, but are scheduled to be upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich shortly afterwards.
Intel Android devices
Intel processors have been historically slower and more hungry for battery life than processors based on the ARM architecture, which are used in most Android smartphones today. Intel has spent a lot of time optimizing its Atom processor chip for Android, however, and at this year’s CES it announced partnerships with Motorola and Lenovo to bring Intel-powered Android devices to market sometime during or after this summer.
Sam Sheffer of The Verge reports that the “reference design” (essentially a prototype) of an Intel Android smartphone they had on display had a 1.6 GHz Atom processor, and handled games like Angry Birds and Modern Combat 2 nicely. Intel claims that it has resolved the battery life issues as well, with “up to 8 hours” of 3G talk time promised for the reference design.
Google TV makes a comeback
We won’t know if anyone actually likes the new Google TV devices until they come to market this year. But a half-dozen companies partnered with Google and showed off new and improved Google TV devices. Meanwhile one company — Lenovo — that used its own customized version of Ice Cream Sandwich, instead of the “official” Google TV version of Android.