Hoowee! Look at this thing! What you’re looking at here is a very early prototype of an upcoming Sony Ericsson 5-inch, full-QWERTY Android phone, and I gotta say, I kinda like it.

However, 5 inches does make it a bit of a beast, moving the device squarely into too-big-to-be-a-phone-too-small-to-be-a-tablet territory… but look at that keyboard! It looks totally typeable!

The sleuthy photographer (translated link) says that it is running Android 2.1, with no current plans for Froyo, but, as it’s a very early prototype, both the software and the body may very well change.

Obviously, there is no news on release dates (let alone pricing), but you can rest assured that as more leaks surface, we’ll be typin’ em up, just for you.

[via Engadget]

We’re in Barcelona keeping an eye on Eric Schmidt’s Mobile World Congress keynote, where the Google CEO just disclosed an interesting fact: Google and their hardware partners are now shipping 60,000 Android handsets each day.

Whether “shipped” here means “sold to end users” or “ordered by retailers” is unclear – but regardless, it’s quite the feat either way.

If that’s a true average rate and it holds true for the next year, that works out to about 5.4 million handsets per quarter, or 21.9 million per year. Not only that, but the rate seems to be growing fairly rapidly; according to Schmidt, the rate has nearly doubled over the last quarter.

Solely as a point of reference for the curious: Apple sold 8.7 million iPhones last quarter.

Looks like Acer’s going to be putting more of its mobile eggs
in the Android basket next year, with about half of its handsets in 2010 to feature Android
instead of Windows Mobile.

According to DigiTimes:

"Acer, while still developing Windows Mobile-based smartphones,
has shifted its development policy to focus more on the Android platform,
with at least half of new models launched in 2010 to be Android-based,
according to industry sources."

The Android-based Acer A1 should be making its official appearance in the coming months,
with the WinMo-based F1, L1, C1, and E1 becoming available by the end of the year.

From : http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/10/02/the-geeksphone-one-comes-out-of-left-field-but-still-impresses/