Android up to the challenge in cellphone battle with Apple

The new Android phones are starting to eat Apple’s lunch. Apple knew the Androids could go beyond iPhone, so no surprise. But with the iPhone 5 and some advanced Androids coming out in September, will Apple stay on top?

Google, which developed Android in the first place, is now acquiring Motorola Mobility, which has been rolling out some excellent Android cellphones this year. This $12.5 billion deal makes Google an even more formidable competitor for Apple.

The iPhone has some 350,000 apps, but the number of apps for Android is catching up fast. Where the Apple’s operating system is still proprietary, the Androids are open source. That encourages greater ingenuity in the Android.

This kind of competitive creativity doesn’t come easy. It’s excited by the fact that Androids are being built by half a dozen companies, not one like Apple, and carried by all the carriers, not two (AT&T and Verizon) like Apple.

Apple is clearly threatened, and has sued Android makers HTC, Samsung and Motorola for patent infringement. In those patent wars, Apple has obtained injunctions to stop sales of Android products in various countries in Europe.

The new Androids feature more horsepower and favor bigger screens. As they unleash their functionality, they displace other devices from our lives. This emancipates us from clutter but makes us more reliant on our cellphones.

Soon there’ll be no need for separate readers, speakerphones, answer phones, video players, GPS devices, watches, mouses, remotes or flashlights. There will be no further need for land lines or Outlook, and many of us won’t need desktops.

It’s a convergence. If the cellphone screen is large and bright enough to read and its touch keyboard is big enough to type, one size could fit all. You’ll be able to get along on your cellphone and won’t need a laptop, iPad or tablet.

With all that, it’s the broadcasting that boggles the mind. Citizen journalism is here. You and your friends can cover an event and send multiple video reports to the cloud for global distribution in minutes. Stay tuned to ChaChanga.com.

Every cellphone can be a hotspot. You can network them together with mesh technology and have them sense, survey and interpret every kind of data over large areas. That gives you a military instrument with battlefield capabilities.

Cellphones will replace credit and swipe cards. Buyers will use them to shop buy and ride, and sellers can use them to take payment (see squareup.com for the iPhone). And they’ll keep an automatic record of all those transactions.

They’ll get you into an airport and on a plane. They’ll get you into your car and house and office, and be safer than any key you’ve ever had. If you lose your cellphone, just call in, disable it and get GPS information to locate the thief.

They’ll monitor your health. They’ll watch your pulse, respiration, blood sugar and blood pressure, and will be able to tell you and if necessary send an alarm to others if something goes wrong, just like the high-end cars do in an accident.

They’ll make your life safer, warning you of danger and calling for help. They could sound a siren and include a taser for self-protection. Push one button for an ambulance, another for a police car and a third for the fire department.

Wait until voice recognition enables full conversation and translation. Send your dictation to be transcribed and emailed anywhere in any language. Send the result to be filed and, if you like, printed, waiting for you on your return.

The new models and functions come faster in what seems like a new generation every 60 days. With that kind of turnover, how can they pin users down for 24-month contracts? Prediction and hope: The 24-month contract will get shorter.

As the iPhone and Android phones get better, there are millions to be made in designing apps. Software development kits are available from both, so Hawaii developers can get a share of that market. Right now it’s low-hanging fruit.

The iPhone gets credit for leading the way, but leaders like that can never rest. The competition is in full tilt, and with the new Androids we’ll all be looking to see if the iPhone is still in first place when the smoke clears in September.

Will you be buying in for these delicious choices? It depends on your early-adopter mentality, your termination fee and your love of technology. Sure, you can wait, but if you watch you’ll find lots of your friends are taking the plunge.

For me, I’m moving to the Verizon Motorola (a 4.3-inch screen, 1GHz dual-core processor, 1GB RAM, 32GB storage, two-camera, 4G LTE, Gingerbread) Droid Bionic, with HDMI 1.4 output and inductive charging, as soon as it comes out.

I only hope Google’s acquisition doesn’t delay the release.

Jay Fidell, a longtime business lawyer, founded ThinkTech Hawaii, a digital media company that reports on Hawaii’s tech and energy sectors of the economy. Reach him at fidell@lava.net.