Would Albert Einstein’s Phone Be A Google Android?

In the movie I.Q., I discovered that Albert Einstein had been fascinated with compasses since childhood. “When he was four and sick in bed, Albert Einstein’s father gave him a magnetic compass. Albert practiced turning the compass every which way, soon becoming fascinated by the new toy. No matter which way he turned it, the needle would always point in the same direction, much in the way Einstein’s genius and fascination with nature pointed him toward a life of scientific discovery,” writes Richard Duffy in the My Hero project.

(I.Q. is one of my favourite romantic comedies. It’s hard to resist a hero, played here by Tim Robbins, who’d invent cold fusion to win a girl. A chance was missed to link I.Q. to the great 1930’s screwball comedies, though, by not finding a part for Einstein’s pet fox terrier.)

In Technology Review today there’s a review of Google’s 3G phone, Android, comparing and contrasting it with the iphone. There’s one bizarre feature: “The G1 also has one unusual hardware feature: a built-in compass that can determine the direction in which the phone is pointed.”