There have several rumored reports that quite a few companies are coming up with MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices) powered by Android. To me, this is the future. Most devices in the next few years will support touch based internet/web browsing. Although it is believed that the Apple iPhone/iPod Touch are the two pioneering devices which started this “movement”, these are no longer the only devices which shares the same browsing experience. Considering Google Android is free and provides the same experience as iPhone OS, most hardware vendors are looking forward to this option.

As an example, check out the SMiT MID-560. The device “ports a 5-inch WVGA touchscreen, 533MHz/667MHz Samsung ARM11 SC3640 CPU (the same chip used in the Samsung Mondi, though at a lower clock speed), WiFi, GPS, DVB, built-in flash memory up to 8GB, and a microSD card slot. Android 1.5 is of course the OS of choice here, so the inclusion of Chrome Lite, Gtalk, GMail, and Google Maps shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. “

[source: pocketables.net]