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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?"
and its can be on sprint?
Yes, Apple should become concerned.
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
No. Apple should not be concerned because they are great are doing hardware... :-)
According to some patents, Apple may be working on cooler stuff like pressure sensitive screens etc.
Also, the resolution of most Open Handest/android applications are going to be for QVGA screens since that is what the SDK encourages. It will look like shrunken crap on VGA or WVGA screens, so dont expect any handset vendors to make decently priced phones above QVGA.
So, in short, the iPhone 2 will be 4 years ahead of any Google Open Handset Alliance phone.
-Johan
PS> Maybe google should have made this platform good for non mobvile phone stuff too like for in cars or whatever
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.
or else!
Another cell phone! Woot! The market was so sparse!
Maybe they can release an MP3 player next! Boo-yeah! Or a WW2 FPS game!
"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.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Has any one tried running android on a Neo1973?
The cool things is to have windows that bounce up and down like a good tits.
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
Hey, I'm great at prediction. Just listen to what I say, and the exact opposite will happen.
I've noticed that most prognosticators are about on a par with me, or even worse. What's that meme, er, something about nothing and moving along?
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I always enjoying hearing about things people find disgusting or that they dislike.
Well then, my latest slashdot journal is just for you - not just a rant, but a curmudgeon rant! What more could you ask for?
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Funny, I would have said:
Apple makes hardware that works
Google makes software that works
You misinterpret the iPhone's initial market if you think it is suitable for business (it isn't), for instant messaging (it doesn't have that feature), or social networking (unless you want to use the built in Safari web browser).
All the iPhone does (for now) is:
Phone
Internet
Media
A light smattering of accessory applications
And I only paid $300 for mine. $600 was so four months ago. The 8GB iPhone is only $399.
And at the things it does, meaning phone, internet, and media, I have never seen another phone nearly as good. And as time goes on, Apple will be adding more and more features with, I presume, the same usability and polish that the first three applications shipped with.
There is significant overlap between Google and Apple, in this case, in that Apple provides the ultimate prototypical platform for a gPhone while Google provides the ultimate framework for developing the applications and UI that the iPhone OR gPhone would need.
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If you download the Android SDK, and run the emulator, you will see what the phone will almost certainly look like.
Google makes software that works. LOL
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Am I the only one to think that the "sleek user interface" looks like Winamp pimped up by a Paris Hilton loving teenager? Not exactly a sleek user interface.
I think that Apple has nothing to worry about in this regard.
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...).
I remember when ACE was announced. For you youngin's, the Advanced Computing Environment was an alliance of Compaq, Microsoft, MIPS Computer Systems, Digital Equipment Corporation, and the Santa Cruz Operation to build the next generation of computers in 1991. Basically, they wanted to wrestle control of the industry away from Intel. Steve Jobs was famously quoted as saying industry alliances always fail because there are just too many competing interests. He challenged people to name some successful industry alliances.
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.
The question is whether gPhone can establish a profound ecosystem of its own. It might do so & still not materially affect Apple, since Apple is offering an integraded personal digital ecosystem that gPhone is not aiming for in Android.
Besides everything else, I predict that given Google's tight relationship with Apple, we will see Google ads at some point on the iPhone.
With the volume of handsets worldwide, there is plenty of room for 2-3 GREAT players.
Google will probably let me do what I want with it and not try to brick it. I bet I have access to it's memory intentionally!
Um, well, yeah, that's a good idea, though it's not going to kill the iPhone. But what could cause such a thing to be launched IS a way to kill the iPhone. A really open platform that's easy to develop on. A plethora of free, fun, useful apps, some of which will be amazing and an overnight success in a way that the phone itself won't be.
Someone here pointed out that Apple is a Prada to Google's Samsonite. As far as people see it that way (and there are lots, I know), Apple has nothing to worry about. But the gPhone will slowly catch up and pass, in terms of functionality, and will develop some incredible applications, because of the sheer number of people who could develop for it.
The iPhone is going to be for people who are willing to pay a LOT more for both a phone and for phone calls, in return for status and slick user interface. But the gPhone will be what they're forced to use so they can get applications they need, either for business or just life.
Its clearly not from someone in the business. As someone in the business, but not involved in gphone, take my word for it.
"You misinterpret the iPhone's initial market if you think it is suitable for business (it isn't), for instant messaging (it doesn't have that feature), or social networking (unless you want to use the built in Safari web browser)."
Which is why the GP said (bold emphasis mine): "I mean seriously you can't use the iPhone for business, you can't use it to omgkfcbbq Instantmessage your friends. You can't use it for social networking."
Other than that, I agree with you completely. Google will make an OS that will provide programmers the capability to do everything the iPhone should do. But with the SDK out now (or soon) for the iPhone, I expect we'll see a lot more functionality for the iPhone long before the google phone ever hits the market.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
I haven't sat down to do a side by side comparison, but this sure looks like a more useful tool than what Apple and Google are selling. The Nokia looks like it would do everything that I want from a phone, and includes features that the Apple at least lacks.
Three Squirrels
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?
SIGFAULT
Given the number of flash-based ads and overlays on this site, it's safe to assume that if Google can come up with a mobile platform that is capable of handling the page with TFA, they're geniuses.
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.
Got Trader Joe's? friendwich.com RSS feeds work now!
And we all know how that turned out for Apple (vs. Intel/Microsoft).
If you want a high-end phone and are willing to pay a premium so that that software and hardware work together seamlessly (because they're both made by the same company), you'll buy an Apple iPhone.
If you want a commodity phone that runs a ubiquitous UI (OS), but maybe doesn't work perfectly in all situations (e.g. driver problems), you'll buy a gPhone containing standardized hardware (read: cheap, in both senses of the word).
Apple will continue to be the high-end boutique. But someone else will make most of the money.
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
The final products are way too far off to know, but the software demo did look promising and barring any hardware SNAFU's I don't see too much they can go wrong with (that can't be fixed from within the community).
Quack, quack.
It looks like they're more targeting the Qualcomm chipsets, since their kernel repository is for that: http://git.android.com/
I just want to transceive calls and vanilla text messages. :(
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
It's good to see competition actually work. For everbodys sake, the gphone only has to be a marginal success before owners of iphones will demand that apple add features like IM.
What will be interesting, once the iphone SDK comes up, what you'll actually be able to do. I'm suspecting that every application that goes on the iPhone will have to be signed by apple, etc... Thus, getting mame on your iphone without voiding your warrenty will be out of the question.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Apple makes fashion accessories.
Google makes software that works.
I'll be sure to inform the users of OSX, iWork, iLife, Aperture, Final Cut, and Logic that Apple's software does not work.
They should run Multics on it! I made a funny...
The phone itself, if ever created as such (and not just a dozen platform-compliant phones from different manufacturers) won't be revolutionary by and in itself.
...and a thousand more which are just too difficult with Symbian and iPhone.
It's the software it can come with that is the true revolution. You'll get a fully programmable, and EASILY programmable device providing you with mostly everything you desire. And because of the 'free software' idea, you won't be limited by silly patents.
Imagine this:
Combine GPS capablity (positioning relative to specific BTS, not the satellites) with ringer phone settings: entering theatre or lecture hall turns "silent" on.
Hack the GSM connection or even bluetooth, and you have a functional walkie-talkie for short-range talking for free.
Port Gameboy, NES and some more emulators.
Allow for morse code SMS text input (way faster than multitap, often faster than T9) and readout (read SMS without taking the phone off your pocket)
Skype->VoIP could come cheaper than most mobile connection rates (especially interntational)
GPS without GPS module - use BTS pings to triangulate your location and find yourself on Google Maps.
All kinds of weird shit you can pull out with the multitap, including fingers-smearing OpenCanvas-like multiplayer painting.
Combine a few of these for a bigger screen.
Use a bluetooth full-size PC qwerty keyboard. Maybe somehow a 17" screen too.
Emulate iPhone (and annoy the shit off Mac users)
Combine it with some GPIO hardware and use it to drive stuff remotely (a car?)
Get a handful of simple hardware (maybe Chineese will produce something that will plug into USB), run the emulator with modifications and change your laptop or even desktop into a (rather big) gPhone.
Build your own. The specs are quite open.
Run a modified manager process that keeps 95% of the phone's features powered down unless you specifically switch them on (including screen and most of the software) keeping the phone to run two weeks on a single charge (all power used by other chips goes to GSM).
Stream mp3s from your home server.
Use internal temp sensors and battery controller for a "hand warmer" function.
Scanner, Mouse (using camera) or Trackpad (using touchscreen) for PC.
Precisely tune the vibration motor timing, accelerometer input and the camera input and change the phone into an RC/autonomic vehicle moving using vibrations of precise waveform making it slide in a specific direction...
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I'm probably responding to a troll, but, Apple makes hardware/software/service solution that are usable for the average person. The iPod created the mainstream market for portable digital music players because it was the first one where the entire user experience was easy enough for the average person (who until then was using a portable CD player). Until Apple stepped in it was too hard for most people to buy music online, rip CDs, and load that onto the player.
The iPhone is the same thing all over again, but replacing "portable music player" with "smartphone." It is the first cell phone with Web and e-mail, an organizer, a music player, SMS, and a few apps that is actually usable for the average Joe.
A lot of people don't understand Apple's success and try to dismiss it. They look at bullet points of features and the price and think Apple is providing too little for too much money. For some people, especially technical people that like to tinker, that is true. For the average person, however there is a lot of value in a polished user interface and overall experience.
Google makes software that works.My experience is Google makes online services that work, and mediocre software to interface with them.
We need today's technology unhindered! Every time you turn around, the phone companies reduce or remove functionality built into the phones so they can make more money somehow... preventing people from sending attachments, preventing people from creating and transferring their own ring tones to their phones from their PCs and on and on and on.
We don't need anything that's not already available. We just need something unbroken.
I can do that too..
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22iphone+problems%22
and mine got more hits.
I'm not really familiar with the SDKs since I'm not a coder, but I don't believe this is the way the OS X/aqua/whatever is appropriate SDK works so why would the iPhone SDK work that way?
I mean, the point of releasing the SDK is specifically so people can create software they want, within Apple's current framework. Obviously they're not going to provide tools that allow you to break current functionality limits or cause contract concerns with AT&T, but why would adding mame or IM be any kind of issue?
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
If the SDK is constructed such that all programs are "encrypted", digitally signed as it were, and iPhones crafted that they would only run signed code, then third party unsupported software would have to be hacked to run on an iPhone, no different than today.
GPL Deconstructed
ROTFLMAO
I think this video gives a better view into the possibilities: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FJHYqE0RDg&eurl=http://code.google.com/android/
I think that calling this an alliance is just PR. Maybe I'm missing something, but they don't all have to produce the same thing. They don't have to use exactly the same application software, they don't have to use the same form factor, they don't have to agree on which features to ship or enable.
This seems more to me like the industry following Compaq and standardizing on the IBM BIOS in the early 1980s. With that decision out of the way, you could produce computers in a variety of form factors with whatever software you wanted. There was a base on which to build.
In this case, Google seems firmly in control because they've already built a basic and extensible software platform. They're not asking for agreement, they're saying here it is, who wants to use it, and who wants to extend it?
It seems to me that what's critical is gaining critical mass before the platform forks (which it will eventually).
Google makes software that works. LOL
Hmm, that actually seems like relatively few results for "$PRODUCT problems". Especially if you compare to the results for "iphone problems" or "ipod problems".
(For a cheap laugh, compare to "vista problems")
Yeah, all they've done is create a company with a market cap over 200 billion. They're dumb. You could have done that. What you're forgetting is that "being advertising middlemen" required them to create a huge, scalable infrastructure that spans the globe. Then they had to figure out the distributed software architecture to make it all work. I love when people say Google doesn't innovate or that they buy all their products. What few people realize is that Google is the Walmart of technology. They've innovated by engineering massively scalable, highly distributed systems AND they've figured how to incorporate dozens of great applications into that infrastructure. They have essentially streamlined the "information supply chain". What have you done?
Agreed, however, you need to compare apples-to-apples, or at least more closely then a webmail application to an operating system or piece of hardware.
"mail.app problems"
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Wow really you can't do instant messaging or social networking on an iPhone?
Someone should really tell Apple: http://www.apple.com/webapps/socialnetworking/index_top.html
As others have pointed out, Apple produces an integrated stack of a product. Hardware and software that are designed to work together. That's true for the Mac and it's true for the iPhone.
Google and their associates are looking to create a software stack that will run on a variety of hardware platforms. Exactly whose business model does that emulate? I think Apple has less to worry about than Microsoft does. This new platform is designed to fit exactly into the same niche that's currently occupied by Windows Mobile.
Saying Apple should be worried generates lots of headlines and readership, but it seems to me the ongoing Google - Microsoft "war" just opened a new front.
Yeah, they weren't good comparisons, but I was having trouble thinking of a comparably popular webmail app. This was about my train of thought: "What's a good comparison to Gmail? Hotmail? Does Hotmail still exist? Shit, what other mail sites are there? Screw it, I'll just use the iPod. Oh, and the iPhone would actually be relevant!"
I've only been using Gmail and my university address for a while, and using a web app to check email just seems silly to me compared to a nice IMAP.
On topic, though, Yahoo mail would have made an apt comparison, but they actually had fewer results, so it would have undercut my point, and I just can't accept with a clear conscience any evidence that contradicts me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FJHYqE0RDg
The earbuds look the same on both. For the most part, that is all anyone sees. I only know two people who bought video ipods, both because they wanted to use them for watching video (one while commuting, one at a night job).
...but I somehow doubt Joe sixpack is ready to pay $12,000 on iTunes, or even rip 12,000 of his own songs, or even use his pod as a usb drive to transfer files.Last time I saw numbers, something like 1.5% of music on iPods came from the iTunes Music Store. The rest was from CDs and from downloads (P2P, other music services). I know a lot of people with more than 8 Gb on their iPod.
The features, the convenience, the interface did NOT sell iPods.So why did iPods become popular and a fashion item in the first place?
Look at the commercials. Look at the Mac store. If you still say it is not about fashion first and technology second, I guess I lost ya.They certainly market them as "cool" but so does everyone else with their products. The Apple store seems to have people ready to demo features and all the sales pitches I've heard deal with what they can do, not how they look.
Beyond occasional searching for music to play a particular song, I have not really met anyone who needed a slick interface on their Music files, they just hit random and go.Being able to operate it one handed with ease, while jogging is of use to people. Having software to easily rip CDs and load the songs onto the iPod is of a lot of use to people. I knew a guy with a doctorate in satellite imaging who had so much trouble getting his CDs ripped using Windows, included software, and the software that came with his mp3 player he loaded iTunes just for that purpose.
For a whole lot of people having a slick interface lowers the barrier to entry and learning curve enough so that it is convenient enough for them.
Not only that, but how many people bought an iPod because it was the greatest thing ever and N-E-V-E-R use it?I don't know. Do you?
If the iPhone was exactly an iPod with no new interface but with a simple cellphone built in, I believe the success would be very similar.If the iPhone was a phone without an iPod function, but it worked as well and easily as the iPhone I think it would still be a success. I don't own either an iPhone or an iPod, but as a user interface expert I certainly admire the work that went into them and I wish any of the cell phones I've ever owned had an interface that was even close to as easy to use.
Sales of the iPhone are are currently around 1.35 million units. To put that in perspective, in 2007 about 1.13 BILLION handsets will be sold worldwide. So Apple's market share could be generously estimated at about 0.2%--they just aren't a real player in the phone market.
Apple shouldn't be concerned about the Google phone. They should be concerned about what will happen in a year or so when the media hype has worn off and there are a dozen viable (and more functional) iPhone equivalents.
Android is a great idea, but the more I hear about it the more it's looking like a heavy weight OS more suitable for bulky PDA-type phones. That would ristrict it to a niche market.
Don't think Android will every be able to run on lower mid range phones like
Nokia and Sony ericsson are producing now (thinking along the lines of SE K610, or Nokia 6131)... cheap, powerful, slim line phones like this are going to rule the market
You didn't use a literal so your results include everything that has the word "bugs" in it.....
try this instead foolio
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PowerPC is a RISC microprocessor architecture created by the 1991 Apple-IBM-Motorola alliance, known as AIM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC
The iPhone is the same thing all over again, but replacing "portable music player" with "smartphone." It is the first cell phone with Web and e-mail, an organizer, a music player, SMS, and a few apps that is actually usable for the average Joe.
More than that: it's a smoother experience even for many people who *are* capable of navigating other smartphones. I haven't bought in yet for a few reasons (don't want to drop the $ on it yet, still thinking of trying something with real 3g instead), but the basic experience of doing all those things is an order of magnitude more compelling as the nearest alternative I've tried.
The average joe isn't the only person who's interested in the kind of experience Apple has to offer with their products.
Tweet, tweet.
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I predict that we'll all have flying cars in the year 2050.
PS, if you wont to promote google you shouldn't associate it with wallmart, cheap, nasty, and scams it's employees but then again ;).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Why not port it to existing phones? It would take some work, but there's got to be a large enough user base of linux-bootable Razr/etc.. users to make it worth it a la new firmware on routers. If only every capable phone came with Apple fanboys attached... The iPhone is probably disabled from booting anything but the OSX it has, but the amount of reverse engineering was impressive considering the same mount or more could be accomplished with other phones too. ...and hey, google's giving you the whole middle-ware stack for free now! Is the SDK just the middle-ware or does it have the kernel with drivers too? I'm almost curious enough to download it.
in actually it is common knowledge that the GPhone will have a 3d user touchscreen combined with psiso-optical megnetopherometer based inductance that will allow time travel along not just the normal time dimension, but along a 2nd heretofore undiscovered dimension of time, which Google has coined "GTime". Google is hoping to tap into the market of those who want to talk, check email, browse the web, and time travel on the go.
Before you mod me down, consider that I have exactly as much evidence for my conclusions as the person who posted the original slashdot article.