(Credit:
Gizmodo)
A tipster just sent in these Nexus One screenshots that supposedly confirm two things: that Google will sell it unlocked and unsubsidized for $530, and that Google will sell it itself. Plus, some other very interesting details.
Some of the most important bits of info we extracted (assuming the tipster is accurate, and it seems like he is). Oh, and take a look at our hands on with the device in case you haven't familiarized yourself with it yet.
• Yeah, it's $530 unsubsidized. Google's not going to be selling the phone at cost, like so many people considered. They're not going to save us from the "making money off of hardware" culture we've got right now, so this is basically just another Android handset, albeit a really good one
• If you want it subsidized, you'll have to sign up for a 2 year mandatory contract and pay $180 for the phone
• There's only one rate plan: $39.99 Even More + Text + Web for $79.99 total
• Existing customers cannot keep their plan if they want a subsidized phone; they have to change to the one plan, and this only applies to accounts with one single line
• If that doesn't fly with you, you have to buy the $530 unlocked version--this actually might save you money over two years if you already have a cheap plan
• Family plans, Flexpay, SmartAccess and KidConnect subscribers must buy the phone unlocked and unsubsidized for $530
• You can only buy five Nexus One phones per Google account
• There is language in the agreement of shipping outside the US
• Google will sell it at google.com/phone, which explains what they were doing with that page a few weeks ago
• Google will still call it the Nexus One apparently, and not the Google Phone
And here is a big one:
• If you cancel your plan before 120 days, you have to pay the subsidy difference between what you paid and the unsubsidized price, so $350 in this case. Or you can return the phone to Google. You also authorize them to charge this directly to your credit card.
One weirdness in the Terms of Sale that we quickly glanced through was that Google made sure you acknowledged that the manufacturer is HTC, and not Google.
This story originally appeared on Gizmodo.
(Credit:
Gizmodo)
(Credit:
eMarketer.com)
New data shows that the iPhone may finally have a true competitor in the Android operating system with user profiles appearing very much alike.
According to eMarketer.com, marketing intelligence firm comScore found that 37 percent of U.S. mobile users had heard of Android in November 2009, up from 22 percent in August, "likely due to the Verizon Droid ad campaign." More interestingly, "17 percent of mobile users in the market for a new smartphone in the next three months planned to buy an Android phone, compared with 20 percent who would pick up an iPhone."
The data also showed that usage patterns for Android and iPhone owners were very similar in terms of media consumption, browser and application usage, but e-mail oddly tracked behind on Android devices. This is likely due to the immaturity of the mail application that ships with Android and not a change in use patterns.
This news obviously keeps the iPhone in the dominant position but shows that other smartphones finally present a real challenge. It's notable because BlackBerry and iPhone users have always seemed worlds apart, whereas Android users seem to be using their devices at parity with the iPhone crowd.
The fact that the Droid runs on Verizon instead of AT&T no doubt helps, though only time will tell if Verizon can handle the traffic, or if T-mobile could handle the pressure of a huge influx of new Google Nexus One phones running Android.
... Read more
Thanks to a clandestine meeting with a source, I got a chance to play with and try out the Nexus One. It's basically, from my time with it, Google's Droid killer. It's thin, it's fast, it's better in every way.
My source was very firm about no photography, and I didn't want to jeopardize anything on my source's end, so there are no photos, hence these photos are ones we've already shown you. But, based on all the leaked shots this week, plus the very pretty and very clear one last week from Boy Genius, everyone knows what the phone looks like already. Hell, there's even a complete UI walkthrough today that's on YouTube. So I'm going to focus on the experience, and how it compares to the Droid and the iPhone 3GS.
... Read more
(Credit:
FCC)
Updated at 4:20 PST with response from T-Mobile.
After a busy weekend where it made its very unofficial debut, HTC's Nexus One entered into full legitimacy Monday with approval by the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC documents also reveal that the device will support North American GSM bands (850 and 1900) and T-Mobile's 1700 3G network.
Though at least one Nexus One sighted this weekend was running on an AT&T SIM card, the support for T-Mobile's 3G would leave AT&T out of the running for the Nexus One, at least for now. The two carriers use the same GSM bands for voice calls, but their 3G networks are incompatible.
T-Mobile said it doesn't comment on rumors or speculation, but its participation in the Nexus One (aka the "Google phone") would send a mixed message concerning how the device would be distributed to consumers. The Wall Street Journal reported today that Google would directly sell the Nexus One as an unlocked unsubsidized model. Distribution through a carrier channel, however, would mean that Google wouldn't sell the Nexus One on its own.
Details and specs on the Nexus One remain mostly unknown, but the FCC documentation also shows that the handset would support hearing aids, a microSD card slot, Bluetooth, and 802.11b/g Wi-Fi.
(Source: Phonescoop)
As a company that has built a business model atop trust, Google is in a sticky position as it prepares to formally introduce the Nexus One phone.
Google's Nexus One phone could be a sea change in how Google works with Android partners who might turn into competitors.
(Credit: Cory O'Brien via Twitter)Google employees were given free Nexus One phones at a company party Friday night, and the Internet went into a tizzy. Reports surfaced later in the weekend that this device was the long-awaited Google phone, the company's answer to Apple's strategy of controlling the hardware, software, and distribution model with the iPhone, rather than the partner-oriented strategy of developing the guts of the operating system and letting partners each put their own stamp on the finished product.
Just two months ago, Google's Andy Rubin rolled his eyes when asked about an analyst report picked up by TheStreet.com that said Google planned to pursue this exact strategy. He said Google had no plans to make its own hardware--which is one thing since smartphones are almost exclusively manufactured by contractors in China and Taiwan--but he took a further step in spending about 10 minutes arguing why it would be a bad idea for Google to design its own phone and sell it outside of carrier channels.
That line of thinking resonated with many who follow Google and the mobile industry. After all, Google's stated goal for Android ever since the project was revealed in November 2007 was to create an "ecosystem" of multiple phones that would help improve access to the mobile Internet. And Google seemed to finally reach that goal this year, with over a dozen phones in the wild and more promised from some of the world's leading phone makers and wireless carriers.
But if the reports are correct, Google is about to make a radical departure from that strategy. And Google's new course would take it down a path that could sow distrust among the company's Open Handset Alliance partners, who must now be wondering if they're about to get into a marketing war with one of the tech industry's richest companies.
Katie Watson, a Google representative, said on Sunday that the company has confirmed nothing about its plans for the Nexus One, described as a "dogfooding" experiment for internal testing by the company in a blog post Saturday.
In the rush to anoint the Nexus One as the Google Phone, it's quite possible that the tech industry glossed over the fact that Google already sells Android phones, albeit on a limited basis. For quite some time, registered Android developers have been able to buy completely unlocked versions of the G1 and the T-Mobile MyTouch3G (also known as the Google Ion) for $399.
Google does sell some phones, such as the Google Ion, but only to developers for Android testing purposes.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)So there is a solid chance that the Nexus One is merely the Android Dev Phone 3, following the Dev Phone 1 (G1) and Dev Phone 2 (MyTouch or Ion). Just this year, Google handed out Dev Phone 2 models branded as the Google Ion to attendees at Google I/O 2009, but if regular people want to buy that particular phone they have to get the MyTouch3G from T-Mobile with a two-year contract.
It does seem clear that Google has played the premier role in designing the software for the Nexus One. In the company's blog post over the weekend, it said "we recently came up with the concept of a mobile lab, which is a device that combines innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android to experiment with new mobile features and capabilities, and we shared this device with Google employees across the globe."
But the key unconfirmed detail is how Google plans to sell this phone. According to The Wall Street Journal, Google plans to sell this phone unsubsidized on its own, with consumers able to choose a wireless service provider after the fact. However, according to corporate sibling Peter Kafka at All Things D's MediaMemo and Reuters, Google has plans to hook up with longtime mobile partner T-Mobile to help sell the Nexus One through Google's Web site for $199.
How will Google market this phone? Anyone with a television set has likely seen an ad over the last month for the Motorola Droid, an Android phone sold for Verizon's network that has been billed as one of the best Android phones to date. It was also the launch pad for a long-term pact between Google and Verizon that will supposedly produce a family of devices based on Android.
If Google plans to sell the Nexus One directly to consumers, will it insist upon using its brand as the lead brand, rather than the "With Google" branding found on the back of many Android phones? Will it blast the airwaves during the NFL playoffs in January to trumpet the arrival of the Nexus One, perhaps just in time for the Super Bowl? And how will that affect partners such as Motorola and Verizon that have sunk so much money into promoting the Droid, only to see rumors of a Google Phone leak out at the worst possible time: the height of the holiday shopping season?
This could be a very telling moment in Google's history. At the moment, Google's mobile division does not seem to be completely in control of the message it wants to send consumers, partners, and competitors.
If Google really does plan to sell the Nexus One directly to consumers and compete with its customers, it has chosen an interesting way to announce it to the world, keeping the Google Phone rumor mill alive for months while publicly denying such plans. Apple has employed such a marketing strategy for years, insisting on near-silence regarding future product plans but benefiting enormously from the frenzy of interest in every little morsel that mysteriously pops up regarding those plans.
However, Google is not Apple. Google public-relations representatives will sheepishly admit that they have little control over how Google rolls out its products: Google is a company run by engineers, and engineers push the button when the product is ready to ship.
But when you're working in an environment with multiple partners that have competing interests, any confusion over your future plans--especially plans that would appear to yank the floor away--can breed distrust among those partners. One of Google's largest problems right now is that it has built a business model geared around the notion that it can be trusted with almost unprecedented control over the flow of information across the globe, and any cracks in that wall of trust will be exploited by its enemies.
With the way details have trickled out about the Nexus One, Google has either alienated current and future Android partners by muscling in on their turf, or set up thousands of eager smartphone consumers looking for an open alternative to the iPhone for disappointment when they realize Google merely plans to sell an expensive unlocked phone to a limited audience, if at all.
After all, Google essentially declared in its blog post that employees are testing a product with "new mobile features and capabilities" that presumably can't be found on the current crop of phones. It's almost the same language Google used to introduce Chrome OS ("our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be") while insisting that it had no competitive reasons for introducing that Netbook operating system.
Few believed that line with Chrome OS, and fewer still will believe that Google is creating Android for the betterment of humanity if it really plans to sell its own phone.
Updated at 5 p.m. PST with additional details and at 10 a.m. PST December 13 with photo of the phone.
A blog post from a Google executive on Saturday morning dropped hints that the company would release a Google Android phone of its own.
In the post, Mario Queiroz, a Google vice president of product management, said the company had developed a "mobile lab" device that "combines innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android." According to Queiroz, Google has distributed the device to Google employees worldwide so that they could test the new technology and help improve it.
Quieroz's announcement came only a few hours after reported sightings of the device. CNET TV Associate Producer Jason Howell, who had a very brief hands-on with the gadget Friday night and first relayed the news on Twitter, confirms that the "mobile lab" device is an HTC phone running the Android 2.1 operating system.
"I knew it was an HTC device," Howell said. "It looked like the Touch, but was a lot thinner...it was a slick-looking thing and very nice." He also spotted a trackball and four standard Android menu controls, and he said the display was "supersharp" and rivaled that on the Motorola Droid.
Howell didn't get a chance to dig into the handset's specs or detail the changes from the 2.1 update, but he noticed animated wallpapers, slight visual enhancements to the user interface, and a camera on the rear face that resembles the HTC Touch Pro 2. Curiously, Howell said he didn't see any Google logo on the handset. TechCrunch published additional, though unconfirmed, details, including a Snapdragon processor, an OLED touch screen, and a voice-to-text feature, while TheUnlockr posted leaked photos.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the handset will be called the Nexus One. Although HTC made the hardware, the software and user interface is all Google, from the applications to the "look and feel of each screen."
The Journal also said Google will begin selling the device early next year, directly to consumers, thus bypassing the traditional carrier channel. As an unlocked GSM device, the Nexus One could be used with T-Mobile or AT&T, though it's unclear which carrier's 3G bands the handset will support. During his brief tour, Howell wasn't able to test the performance, but he said that the Nexus One he handled was running on an AT&T SIM card.
Reports that Google would release its own Android phone first appeared earlier this year. The move is significant, as it could pit Google against the carriers that it so far has used to distribute existing Android phones. Also, without a carrier contract and subsequent service rebates the Nexus One could cost a few hundred dollars. For those reasons, I was a little skeptical when I first heard the rumor, so count me wrong on this one.
Google and Microsoft have joined a group devoted to creating a way that cell phone buyers can easily comprehend the quality of their camera phones.
The International Imaging Industry Association said the tech titans signed up to help with the third phase of the Camera Phone Image Quality Initiative, in which a variety of companies try to create measurements to capture various test results.
Mobile phones that can take photos are ubiquitous today, but with tiny image sensors and lenses and severe budget constraints, they vary widely in their ability to take good photos. Mostly all that buyers have to go on is a megapixel count, which isn't terribly meaningful when it comes to such small sensors. The International Imaging Industry Association, a consortium whose mission is to make imaging better for consumers, is trying to come up with a better way.
The mobile phone camera tests include resolution, color uniformity, lens distortion, and lens chromatic aberration, but the group also plans to factor in sharpness and noise reduction. A variety of other possibilities ranging from dynamic range, white balance, and resistance to glare also could be added into the mix as well.
The group is trying boil all this down into an official star rating consumers can trust.
Other companies working on the standard include Aptina Imaging, CDM Optics, DxO Labs, Eastman Kodak, Fujifilm, Motorola, Nokia, OmniVision Technologies, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications, STMicroelectronics, ST Ericsson, and VistaPoint Technologies.
Google is derailing the GrandCentral Web site in order to get fully onboard its Google Voice train.
Google sent out an e-mail to GrandCentral users Saturday announcing that it will be closing down the GrandCentral Web site on December 31.
Google Voice, of course, is the new version of the GrandCentral technology Google acquired in July 2007. Under the service, people pick a phone number from Google Voice; when others call it, Google can ring all the actual phones a person uses and handle voice mail.
Google Voice is still in beta, but GrandCentral users have had the option to upgrade since last spring. Old messages, however, are still on the GrandCentral site, so Google strongly suggests "downloading any messages or contacts that you want to keep in the next 43 days," the e-mail read.
Perhaps this signals that Google Voice is nearing a public launch?
Earlier this month, Google announced its intention to acquire Gizmo5, an Internet telephony company it plans to merge into the Google Voice team. Gizmo5 is a Web-based VoIP client that lets you make phone calls over the Internet, similar to programs like Skype.
While it's waiting to be gobbled up by Google, AdMob isn't sitting still.
The mobile ad company announced Tuesday that it will deliver interactive video ads to the iPhone and iPod Touch devices. The ads, set to run this week, will let iPhone users surf the Web and check out other videos while the video ad is playing. AdMob believes advertisers and developers will take advantage of the video format by serving up interactive ads designed to pull in consumers.
"AdMob's new Interactive Video Ad Unit brings together consumers' love of watching videos on their mobile device with advertisers' goal of providing an interactive, social experience for consumers," said AdMob Founder and CEO Omar Hamoui in a statement. "We are excited to create new ways for advertisers to engage with consumers on their mobile devices and for the developers behind the most popular and engaging iPhone applications to effectively monetize."
The video ads will automatically pop up as iPhone users access certain content and applications. The ads will also offer a video player so that people can control and interact with them. To make sure the ads run at a decent clip, AdMob uses a network of distributed servers to push them out. Each video is saved in different file sizes, with the most appropriate one streamed based on the connection type, such as 3G or Wi-Fi.
AdMob is one of the top advertising providers for the handheld and portable device market, a position that convinced Google to cough up $750 million in stock to buy out the company. With its multimedia capabilities and huge market share, the iPhone has proven a fertile ground for video ads, with the first ones popping up in early 2008 and growing since then.
In the battle of the open-source mobile platforms, developers have at least two choices: Google Android, which is open source but (relatively) closed development, or Symbian, which is open source...once it gets around to releasing the full source code.
Guess which one is winning?
You can't code me, but at least you can buy me.
(Credit: Google)Gartner expects Android to become the second-most popular mobile platform within the next few years as it continues to gobble up Symbian's declining market share.
But why?
Symbian has been dismissive of Google Android, as well as smaller upstarts like the LiMo Foundation, arguing that the latter is overly focused on middleware for wireless operators and the former is fake open source with more hype than substance.
All of which might be true, but the reality is that it seems to be working for Android. Google has been signing new handset manufacturers at a frenetic pace, while Symbian has been holding steady with Nokia...and that's about it.
Despite Symbian announcing new handsets, Google is actually shipping Android. There's a big difference between marketing and reality. Google Android offers the latter.
For all the buzz that Android gets from developers, its success owes more to handset manufacturers than to open-source developers. Handset manufacturers and wireless carriers are hungry for alternatives to surging Apple and declining Microsoft. And while others may not be seeing source code in copious amounts, handset manufacturers are apparently getting their fill.
More than this, though, Google gives them a safe, consumer-friendly brand. Symbian does not.
This is the reason Google Android is winning. It's not about developers--at least, not yet. Neither Symbian nor Android really offers developers open communities and open code.
No, the difference today is brand. Google has it. Symbian does not, and that's despite decade-long dominance of the mobile market.
Symbian still has a ways to go. It has a weak user interface (UI) that is supposed to get better, but that describes much that is wrong with Symbian today. Everything (source code, revamped UI, and resumption of market dominance) is always spoken of in the future tense.
Meanwhile, Google Android rolls on--not because it out open-sources Symbian, but rather because it out-executes it.
