Fidel Vanegas

Android’s Samsung and LG upcoming charge, now we are talking …

Jul 16, 2010 Android, Computer Programming, Linux stuff

Someone can not take a couple of weeks of vacation without feeling like getting behind on this Android’s offerings race. It is not news that we all have been waiting for the Samsung Galaxy S family of smart-phones to show up at all four major wireless US carriers sporting very similar “hardware” so now is not about the phone itself or the OS but your carrier of choice that actually comes into play and this is good for consumers; yes competition is good and for us to compare the carriers with less of the hardware bias in mind. Samsung’s Fascinate (Verizon), Captative (AT&T), Epic 4g (sprint) and Vibrant (T-Mobile) are not only very similar but they all are very competitive at the mid-high end of the smart-phone device market.

LG’s a big name in the wireless phone industry is just coming up with a similar strategy proposing a family of smart-phone devices called “Optimus” sporting latest Android’s 2.2 “Froyo” way ahead of anyone else including Samsung so far. LG’s Optimus which may also will follow Samsung’s approach to be open to all US carriers with similar and competitive hardware options including Android’s based tablets as well.

Once a dream of bell labs gurus including Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thomson the original creator’s of the Unix OS way back in the late nineteen sixties and a group of high profile computer scientist including Rob Pike and Douglas Mcllroy among others tried to come up with the idea of having a small but powerful OS (Plan 9) capable of running networked appliance devices and taking advantage of the Internet endless possibilities. Today it is not “Inferno” but Android OS which as any other microkernel OS “Unix Like” operating system such as “Linux” highly leveraged key interconnectivity concepts from Plan 9’s original proposal but at the end the vision is getting to become reality among commercial and consumer electronics market. Both Samsung and LG already well established tech appliance device’s giants seriously pushing Android’s capable devices which are not only aiming at the smart-phone’s market but literally we are talking about serious companies getting into the whole spectrum of cloud portals kind of devices such as mobile, home and business appliances running Android’s OS platform there will be no limits.

References for my academic “geek” fellows

1. Plan 9 authentication in Linux, ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review, Volume 42 , Issue 5 (July 2008) Research and developments in the Linux kernel, Pages: 27-33, Year of Publication: 2008
2. The use of name spaces in Plan 9, ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review, Volume 27 , Issue 2 (April 1993), Pages: 72 – 76, Year of Publication: 1993
3. What’s GNU? Plan 9 Part II, Linux Journal archive, Volume 1995 , Issue 12es (April 1995), Article No.: 5, Year of Publication: 1995
4. Plan 9 from Bell Labs, Proc. of the Summer 1990 UKUUG Conf., London, July, 1990, pp. 1-9 (
5. Plan 9, A Distributed System, Proc. of the Spring 1991 EurOpen Conf., Troms, May, 1991, pp. 43-50 (