Motorola Reveals World's First Push-to-Talk Android Phone

From DailyTech: At the CTIA Wireless conference in Las Vegas on Monday Motorola unveiled the i1, the world's first push-to-talk Android handset (and quite possibly a play on the name of HTC's Nexus One, aka n1). Smartphones and push-to-talk aren't typically mentioned in the same sentence, but the new handset reportedly is tough as nails, engineered to military specifications for protection against protection against dust, shock, vibration, and blowing rain.

The phone comes packed with Flash, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, microSDHC expansion, and H.264 video codec support. The phone also features a 5 MP camera with flash. It comes with Android's built-in multitasking support, and multiple touch keyboards from Motorola. It lacks multi-touch, though, as it uses the older Android 1.5 OS.

The handset's software is largely Google-centric with Google Talk, Google Maps, and Gmail apps all prepackaged with the phone. Other prepackaged third party software includes Opera Mini and Microsoft Document Viewer.

Powered by a Freescale Zeus 2.0 ARM1136 running at 500 MHz and featuring 256 MB of RAM, the phone won't be winning any speed battles against handsets like the Nexus One, the Motorola Droid, or the HTC Incredible. Its rugged design and push-to-talk features, though, combined with the appeal of the Android operating system, may convince some to adopt this slower handset.

Overall, the handset should help continue to broaden the Android operating system's market appeal.

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