At Google's I/O developer conference in San Francisco this week, Android engineering director Steve Horowitz demonstrated the new mobile OS.

"Google bills Android as an 'entirely open source world-class mobile stack,'" notes The Register's Cade Metz. "But at the moment, it's not open source. Google is privately developing the platform in tandem with more than 30 mobile-industry partners, and it won't open things to outside developers until version 1.0 is released 'in the second half of this year.' No, Google wouldn't get more specific than that - even when pressed. So the demo from Horowitz provided a rare glimpse of the Android stack, designed to give you 'everything you need to build a mobile phone from the ground up.'"

"The bells and whistles unveiled Wednesday included: a way to unlock phones by drawing a specific shape on the touchscreen instead of entering a password; bookmarks for favorite Web sites on the device's home page; a 'compass' tool that automatically roams with the phone while a user looks at photographic images of a city map; a magnifying tool to zoom in on Web content; and a mobile version of the video game 'Pac Man,'" writes the AP's Michael Liedtke.

More here from InfoWorld ... more here from InternetNews ... more here from CNET News ... more here from ReadWriteWeb ... more here from eWeek ... and a video of the presentation is here.