Predicting The Google Phone

An anonymous reader writes "Inside The GPhone: What To Expect From Google's Android Alliance (an article at Information Week) argues that you can predict what the GPhone(s) will look like very easily, simply by listing the technologies of the Open Handset Alliance partners. According to this theory, the phone will have a user interface from Sweden's TAT, VCAST-like multimedia capabilities powered by PacketVideo Corp., and an iPhone-like capacitive touch-screen, from Synaptics. Hardware-wise, it'll probably be built around Texas Instruments' OMAP processors, which enable a single-chip world phone (GSM/EDGE/GPRS). "While the GPhone won't be revolutionary, it'll connect the pieces in pleasantly new ways," argues author Alex Wolfe. Should Apple be concerned?"

Comments

No, actually that's wrong

[nilbog]

The processor used in the first Google phones will more likely be the Qualcomm 7200. This is the new chip going into the latest HTC phones (such as the AT&T Tilt/Kaiser/Tytn II/whatever). It is a dual CPU that integrates the Imageon hardware for 2d and 3d graphics acceleration. I believe this is HTC's current choice for their first "gPhone."

Although Qualcomm hasn't released a proper SDK for the processor yet, so hardware acceleration is not fully implemented.

Re:No, actually that's wrong

[Andy Dodd]

I was about to make the same comment, for different reasons - I get the impression that it's nearly impossible to implement a UMTS phone without using a Qualcomm MSM, at least while remaining cost competitive with an MSM-based solution. TI's OMAP series are still EDGE-only.

It's not a dual core CPU. There's a second coprocessor core that is for radio functions ONLY. It's not an SMP dual core CPU.

Ummm.. CDMA?

[LWATCDR]

"Texas Instruments' OMAP processors, which enable a single-chip world phone (GSM/EDGE/GPRS)"
Funny how that is a "world" phone. GSM is only a standard for Europe. In North American you have both GSM and CDMA, Korea is mostly CDMA and I think Japan is also uses a lot of CDMA.
Also Sprint is one of the carriers that is involved in this and they only do CDMA.

Re:Ummm.. CDMA?

[king-manic]

"Texas Instruments' OMAP processors, which enable a single-chip world phone (GSM/EDGE/GPRS)"
Funny how that is a "world" phone. GSM is only a standard for Europe. In North American you have both GSM and CDMA, Korea is mostly CDMA and I think Japan is also uses a lot of CDMA.
Also Sprint is one of the carriers that is involved in this and they only do CDMA. GSM: All or Europe/Russia, most of Asia including china and th ephilipines, most of India, Australia, most of Africa, and most of south America
CDMA: US, Canada, Japan, Korea.

I think your point about GSM only being for Europe is very much wrong. GSM covers a great deal more countries then CDMA. It's a world phone because you can take a GSM phone to nearly any country with cell service and buy a sim card and get connected. With a CDMA phone coverage is sparse or non existent in anywhere but the 4 countries I listed.

Re:Ummm.. CDMA?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Funny, I travel extensively for a living, and my CDMA-only phone (LG "The V") works in China, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, India, Australia, Chile, Brazil, Columbia, Argentina, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Philippines, Taiwan, Russia, Poland, Norway, Denmark, Canada, Mexico and a host of other countries...

In fact, it's really only Western Europe that is GSM-only (barring Portugal, Iceland, Ireland and those listed above). The rest of the world is pretty much dual-standard supporting both CDMA and GSM.

Apple's iPhone is much less significant.

[radimvice]

Apple's iPhone is a single, phone that's very well-designed and includes a slick interface. Oh yeah, and it has the Apple brand (and the corresponding price tag). Reports are that Apple's phone managed to successfully establish itself a niche in the mobile phone world, but that they failed to sell as many as they had hoped.

Google's Android platform, on the other hand, is more than just a single gPhone, as they like to say it's 'thousands of phones', made by dozens of companies, spanning the super high-end iPhone killers to the low-end cheap free-after-rebates you get with your carrier subscription. The operations that Google has set into motion - departing from the traditional JCP standards process, releasing a new non-Sun Java-like Virtual Machine - these moves have a huge potential to transform the entire mobile phone industry as a whole - and, though it's still early to say for sure, the transformation will more than likely be for the better.

So Apple's iPhone is a great, very well-designed product for a few people, but it is overall much less significant than the potential Android has to seriously shake up and inject innovation into the mobile industry. The two are honestly nothing alike, as much as the media would like them to be.

-Will

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[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

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Re:the gPhone and the iPhone are different markets

[teknopurge]

Apple makes fashion accessories.

Google makes software that works. LOL

Opera Mini?

[feranick]

TFA goes a long way suggesting the GPhone will sport Opera Mini as its default browser. Although it will be possible to run any piece of software (according to Sergei Brin), in its current form, the Android platform already has a quite capable browser, based on WebKit. I can't see what Opera Mini can do that it's not possible within the built in browser. I was testing it yesterday on the Android emulator and the browser is both fast and accurate in rendering. I am sure Opera will make a Gphone version, but I bet Mozilla will too. In other words, it won't matter what browser will be ported, because the user will have a great deal of choice.

This is no iPhone (which is Safari only...).

uhhh

[dfj225]

Well, you could do all that or go to the Android site (code.google.com/android) and download the SDK as well as watch the developer videos that are posted. Having done this, you can see the UI as it stands now. Which, by the way, is very different (and much more pleasant, IMHO) than what is shown in the images linked from TFA.

In addition, you can also see from the SDK's emulator what chip is being emulated (ARM926EJ-S [41069265] revision 5) and how much ram is available (96MB) and so on.

Why so much pure speculation when there is much more accurate data available from the published SDK?

Why Predict? Here's a Demo

[asphaltjesus]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb2N0QzX1NI

This doesn't look particularly revolutionary from an end-user perspective. The video uses a bunch of different buttons to do stuff, so I don't know how a touch screen would improve matters dramatically.

If someone says, "Just wait. It'll be great!" I dunno, there appears to be a bunch of gui-stuff already done and that's the hardest and least sexy part of the work that hardly anyone is willing to re-do.

Re:good luck

[imstanny]

He challenged people to name some successful industry alliances. OPEC

Re:good luck

[imstanny]

Can anyone name some successful computer industry alliances composed of competing members? This alliance has tons of members who compete directly with each other: handset manufacturers, software companies, chip manufacturers. The idea that these companies are going to align all of their interests, come together and produce anything is pretty far fetched IMHO. IMHO, you should read the report. The companies listed are not competing with each other. Unless of course Syanptics is producing processing chips and Texas Instruments is generating revenue by making touch pads.

Successful computer industry alliances

[James Youngman]

1. VESA
2. The Open Group
3. IEEE
4. GSM
5. The Unicode Consortium
6. Bluetooth SIG
7. CAN
8. EIA (responsible for, among other things, JEDEC, who are responsible for DDR and related standards)

The PowerPC

[bgspence]

PowerPC is a RISC microprocessor architecture created by the 1991 Apple-IBM-Motorola alliance, known as AIM.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC