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Google Announces "Open Phone" Coalition, No gPhone [Updated]

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the well-isn't-that-special dept.

Ponca City, We Love You writes "USA Today has an advance story on Google's plans to announce a new operating system, geared specifically for cellphones with partners that include Sprint, Motorola, Samsung and Japanese wireless giant NTT DoCoMo. Although details won't be released until later today the new G-system will be based on Linux overlaid with Java and Google hopes to have a branded device ready for worldwide shipment by spring. Mobile Web browsing is notoriously slow and Google plans to change that by providing easy access to the Internet at PC-type speeds. Google plans to basically give away the software developer tools, used by programmers to write new applications. "If you're a developer, you'll be able to develop (applications) for the new Google Phone very quickly," said Morgan Gillis of the LiMo Foundation. AT&T and Verizon Wireless are noticeably absent from the coalition not wanting to support a device that favors Google over other providers. Sprint, the No. 3 carrier, supports the coalition, but it hasn't formally agreed to make the Google Phone available to its 54 million subscribers." Update 1727 GMT by SM: It's official, Google is releasing the mobile "Android" OS in place of the Google branded mobile phone that many expected.

5 of 225 comments (clear)

  1. Google phone, long awaited by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 5, Funny

    The new operating system will be called GNU/Goo/Do/Mo/SpriSamSun/Linux.

    I, for one, welcome our new alliterative overlords.

  2. It's offical by neokushan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Open Platform? Available to all? No hidden charges? It's official, Google is the polar opposite to Apple.

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    +1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
  3. Re:AT&T? by digitig · · Score: 5, Insightful

    AT&T... [is] noticeably absent from the coalition not wanting to support a device that favors Google over other providers. WHAT?! They support devices that favor Apple over other providers. Does anyone else see this hypocracy? Not as hypocrisy, no. If they said that all coalitions should be provider-neutral it would be hypocrisy. If they just say that this coalition conflicts with their existing deals then it's not hypocrisy at all.
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    Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
  4. Re:AT&T? by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Why is it that, every time I see a true Apple fanboy post here, I always get an image of James Earl Jones in "Conan the Barbarian," beckoning one of his followers to come to him by walking off a cliff?

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    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
  5. Re:What version of Java? by wmacgyver · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's not that Sun is depreciating JavaME. But that JavaME and JavaSE will merge. More detail on this from James Golsing's blog entry.