There couldn’t have been a Google I/O conference without some insight on the Android platform, and Google didn’t let us down. During the keynote, Google offered a live demo of Android on an unbranded mobile device.

The presentation featured touch screen capabilities for a wide range of applications and Web services (which got everyone thinking about the iPhone). In addition to that, with the help of its compass feature, which includes an accelerometer, Google’s Street View allows the user to orient the view as he turns the device.

Developers are thrilled about the new platform, and as one of them told PC World, Android makes it easy to begin developing applications, and could also be extended to inexpensive phones with a smaller set of capabilities.

Andy Rubin, director of mobile platforms at Google, said consumers can expect to see the Android available on mobile phones in the second half of 2008, emphasizing that security, unlike in older platforms, will not be an issue anymore.

Android is a software stack for mobile devices developed and promoted by Google that includes an operating system, middleware and key applications.

Android is based on the Linux operating system and was first announced on 5 November 2007, and is the result of the collaboration between Google and companies like HTC, Intel, Motorola, T-Mobile, NVIDIA and Qualcomm, all working on developing open standards for mobile devices.

The platform features an application framework enabling reuse and replacement of components, a Dalvik virtual machine optimized for mobile devices, optimized graphics powered by a custom 2D graphics library; 3D graphics based on the OpenGL ES 1.0 specification (hardware acceleration optional), media support for common audio, video, and still image formats (MPEG4, H.264, MP3, AAC, AMR, JPG, PNG, GIF) and few other things like Bluetooth, EDGE, 3G, and WiFi (hardware dependent) and camera, GPS, compass, and accelerometer (hardware dependent).