Motorola announced the i886 iDEN handset for Sprint Nextel on January 10. It is one of Motorola's first rugged handsets with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. After spending several minutes using it, it is clear that the operating system is based on Android. The i886's inner menu systems show that it is running Android.
From what we can tell, the i886 appears to be using a J2ME virtual machine to enable Java applications to run on on top of the core Android platform The i886 doesn't have the Android Market on board, nor many of the native Android applications (which are designed for use with touch screens).
Neither Motorola nor Sprint has previously mentioned anything about the i886's software, other than to call it "proprietary." It does have access to a GetJar application catalog, but without a formal explanation from Motorola/Sprint, we're left with many, many questions unanswered.
[phonescoop]
