Devarshi Upadhyay has written up his take on exciting features on the Android platform that developers should be able to take advantage of. He has taken a peak at the partners in the Open Handset Alliance to learn more:

• GPS: The Google Maps client on the iPhone is nice, but you want the phone to know where you are. The hacks are interesting, but we want true GPS, and Android can give that to you with a nice location API (partner: SiRF Technology Inc)
• Browser: WebKit is available to you, not only as a way to launch a browser, but you can also embed it into your application as a View. We can also expect Opera Mini to be on the scene
• Speech recognition: “Nuance’s VoCon Mobile speech-interface solution takes care of standard voice dialing, but goes beyond that to support menu navigation in answer to verbal commands. VoCon is currently used by Motorola, NEC, LG, and Samsung, among other handset manufacturers.

  Apart from the speech recognition, Nuance also has its eye on making text messaging so easy any adult can do it. Nuance recently completed its acquisition of Tegic, which makes simplified text-input software for mobile handsets. Tegic’s main product is called T9, and it’s fitted with the XT9 Mobile Interface. The software supports soft keypads (think “iPhone”) and does the fly error-correction required with Chiclets-key typing.”(partner: Nuance Communications Inc)

• Touch screen: Once you go touch, you can’t go back. I laughed outloud when I was just on a flight and saw an iPhone using kid try to drag the inflight map (partner: Synaptics).
• Push: Having info pushed to the phone. (partner: PacketVideo)
• Graphics: Having gaming-quality graphics on the phone is going to be fantastic. Full OpenGL. (partner: Nvidia).

A lot to bite off!