In what may very well be considered the geekiest sort of fandom possible, I consider myself a fan of Matias Duarte. As I’ve written before: “Wherever this guy goes, awesome user interfaces follow.” He and his team at Danger built a tremendously usable interface for the Sidekick, his work at Helio (especially the stuff that went to waste at the end, never to be seen by the public eye) was incredible, and then.. then there was webOS.

Say what you will about the Palm Pre and Pixi from a hardware standpoint, but the software that runs on’em is pure user interface gold. That’s largely because of the work of Matias and his team. Alas, Palm just lost Matias to the lil’ green robot that could: Android. Google has confirmed to AllThingsD that Matias is joining them as the Android team’s User Experience Director.

Score one for Google.

This talent acquisition could be incredibly important for the folks in Mountain View. Android has a lot of fantastic selling points, but its user interface has never, ever been one of those. Since day 1, users (and nay-sayers) have been vehemently complaining about the interface. It is — and I say this as a pretty huge fan of the platform — rather ugly, and far from intuitive. (Every time I speak to someone who just got their Android phone within the last few days, its the same story: showing them how to reveal the (very important) notification bar results in wide eyes and gaping maws, as if I’d revealed the key to time travel. That’s not good.)

And what does this mean for Palm? Given their recent buyout by HP, it’s probably a bit of a mixed bag. HP has their own team of designers — failing that, they’ve got the money to hire replacements. No matter how talented said replacements may be, though, it’s an uphill battle. webOS has very finely tuned design messages; throw a new cook in the kitchen, and half of their work will be learning the old cook’s recipes.

Making things worse, Matias doesn’t generally roam from company to company alone. When he left Danger for Helio, he brought members of his team. When he left Helio for Palm, he brought members of his team. When he leaves, a good chunk of his team tends to go with. Neither Palm nor Google has confirmed any shifts beyond Matias; with that said, I wouldn’t be surprised if Palm lost 2-3 more designers to Google in the coming weeks, if they haven’t already.

As any good Android-obsessed geek should know by now, Google’s made a tradition out of alphabetically naming their firmware builds after sweets. Android 1.5 was “Cupcake”, v1.6 was “Donut”, v2.0 is “Eclair”, while the next release will be lovingly dubbed “Froyo”. “But what comes after that?!” you say from the edge of your seat.

According to Android kernel developer Brian Swetland, the next major build after “Froyo” will be known as “Gingerbread”. If nothing else, the good thing about that name: no matter what it contains, it’ll be a sweeter treat than the crap I was forced to decorate and eat as a child.

(Like the image? While I wish I could claim that little Android dude is just killer rendering on my part, I just ’shopped in one of the soon-to-be-released Android toys.)

[Via AndroidAndMe]

Sharp eyed reader Mike noticed a little humor in the Nexus One manual screen shots. It looks like the the writers weren’t content with the name “Jane Doe” for a change.

Hubris
–noun
excessive pride or self-confidence; arrogance.

(thanks to Mike for the tip)

Last night, we started seeing some Tweets from Google employees and others about a new Android-powered Google phone that was apparently handed out at an “all hands” meeting. Now Google is confirming that it is indeed “dogfood” testing a new Android device with employees around the world.

But this isn’t just another Android phone. Very trustworthy sources who have seen the phone say that it is the Google Phone we first wrote about last month (despite the uninformed saying we were dreaming). It will be branded Google and sold by Google as an unlocked phone, which could change everything. As we wrote in our original post:

Google is building their own branded phone that they’ll sell directly and through retailers. They were long planning to have the phone be available by the holidays, but it has now slipped to early 2010. The phone will be produced by a major phone manufacturer but will only have Google branding (Microsoft did the same thing with their first Zunes, which were built by Toshiba).

There won’t be any negotiation or compromise over the phone’s design of features – Google is dictating every last piece of it. No splintering of the Android OS that makes some applications unusable. Like the iPhone for Apple, this phone will be Google’s pure vision of what a phone should be.

The phone itself is being built by HTC, with a lot of input from Google. It seems to be a tailored version of the HTC Passion or the related HD2 (Unlocker scored some leaked pictures back in October which are of the same phone). Update: Here is a more recent picture.

Here are the details we know so far about the phone: It will be called the Google Phone (update the official name is “Nexus One”) and will launch in early January, 2010. It won’t be sold by any one carrier, but instead will be an unlocked GSM phone. In the U.S., that means T-Mobile and possibly AT&T, whose exclusivity deal with the iPhone is about to run out. It will be running Android 2.1

The phone is “really, really fast,” says someone who has seen one in action. It runs on a Snapdragon chip, has a super high-resolution OLED touchscreen, is thinner than the iPhone, has no keyboard, and two mics. The mic on the back of the phone helps eliminate background noise, and it also has a “weirdly” large camera for a phone. And if you don’t like the touchscreen keyboard, a voice-to-text feature is supposed to let you dictate emails and notes by speaking directly into the phone.

Attention Android owners nlikely to be 2.0-ed any time soon!
You can now stop holding your breath.
Google Maps Navigation is coming to 1.6, and you can download it right now.
It’s missing a feature or two (voice-activated navigation, for instance), but it’s 95% there.
Of course, depending on your handset, network, and so on, your mileage (so to speak) may vary.