I’m currently sitting in an Android seminar at the Google Developer Day in London, watching Mike Jennings (the head of Android development, not our gargantuan staff writer) give a talk on the open mobile OS. What I thought would be an interesting day with few surprises has just got exciting. Out of the blue we’ve just had the first European demonstration of an Android handset.

 The actual device itself looks much like the “mystery” handset that we’ve all seen before in blurry YouTube videos, and the HTC Dream, which is rumoured to be launching as soon as the next fortnight. Personally, I think it bore a remarkable resemblance to the HTC Dream. 

 Technically, little had changed from the earlier leaked videos, but this device looked far more polished. In fact, it even had masking tape over the operator’s logo. This didn’t look like a pre-release prototype, this looked like it was a finished commercial device.

 Jennings gave a nice demonstration of an OpenGL and Java application that showed a cube morphing and rotating. I’d run the same application on my own PC in the office, and this was running far smoother on a mobile handset. 40 frames per second, claimed Jennings. It’s impressive stuff.