A handful of companies including Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, and ARM displayed prototype handsets loaded with Google’s Android operating system at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, Spain.

The Android SDK was launched in November of 2007, and is maintained by an alliance of more than 30 companies. Android is a Linux based operating system. Though currently it is not completely open source, developers say that plans are to make it open source in the near future.

Texas Instruments, a US chip maker, showed an implementation of Android on its OMAP850 processor chipset, which includes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. The phone has “one button access” to common applications, making it easier to use.

Google said on Friday not to expect anything indicative of what devices will be available to purchase. The phones displayed are only prototypes, and some of them are even only on circuit boards.

Android equipped mobiles are expected to be available to the public sometime this year.

Android was not the only Linux based OS to make an appearance. Several manufactures also displayed mobiles loaded with LiMo from the Mobile Linux Foundation. From its site:

The mission of the LiMo Foundation is to create an open, Linux-based software platform for use by the whole global industry to produce mobile devices through a balanced and transparent contribution process enabling a rich ecosystem of differentiated products, applications, and services from device manufacturers, operators, ISVs and integrators.

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Entry was posted on Monday, February 11th, 2008 at 12:25 pm under Cell phones, Google, Technology.

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