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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?"
No. Apple should not be concerned because they are great are doing hardware... :-)
Great are Apple doing! With you agreed I am! Hardware Apple excelling is! :-)
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!
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
If you download the Android SDK, and run the emulator, you will see what the phone will almost certainly look like.
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.
GSM is the most used standard in the world. There are no significant country that only runs CDMA and only one that dont support GSM (Japan), even korea have gsm networks. So a world phone needs to support GSM.
Visit http://www.crunzh.com/ for free software. Mac/Lin/Win
Not after the cellular provider is done with it...
My question would be why do you want something you haven't even seen yet? For all we know the thing will be a monstrosity that doesn't work well anywhere. Are you simply saying you want one because it's Google or is there reason, other than a different form of fanboyism?
I'm not saying there's something wrong with supporting a company you like, just wondering whether there's some justification for your statement other than liking said company.
You are absolutely correct, the way I stated that sounded very much like fanboyism. Let me rephrase: before the iPhone came out, I was not interested in it at all based on the hype I'd heard surrounding it. By comparison, the gPhone sounds like something that I would want based on the hype.
Fair enough? If you're wondering, the main thing I like is the openness. Even if I wish they supported a language besides Java, it's still better than nothing.
Thank God for evolution.
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.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
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.
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
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.
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?