T-Mobile Will Be First To Use Android

stoolpigeon writes to tell us that T-Mobile's upcoming phone will try to combine the best elements of many of the new smart phones, and will be using Google's Android software. "The HTC phone, which many gadget sites are calling the 'dream,' will have a touch screen, like the iPhone. But the screen also slides out to expose a full five-row keyboard. A video of the phone has been posted recently on YouTube. A person who has seen the HTC device said it matched the one in the video. The phone's release date depends on how soon the Federal Communications Commission certifies that the Google software and the HTC phone meet network standards. Executives at all three companies are hoping to announce the phone in September because they would benefit from holiday season sales."

Comments

A video of the phone has been posted recently on Y

[Junior J. Junior III]

From the summary:

A video of the phone has been posted recently on YouTube.

Come on, link! I'm lazy!

FCC

[XanC]

The FCC has to certify software? That seem strange to anybody? Isn't regulation of the power and frequency enough, and everything else is between the carrier and the phone?

Re:FCC

[wealthychef]

It doesn't seem that strange. They probably regulate airborne communications, not airborne communications hardware. It's not the Federal Communications Hardware Commission, after all. Not that I think the government should have power not explicitly granted in the Constitution, but that's another story. :-)

Re:FCC

[Anonymous Coward]

No. What if the frequency and power were correct, but then the phone decided to sniff out other phone calls and interfere with them? It'd still be within the correct frequency bands and power limits. They have to make sure that the phone "behaves" properly on the network.

Re:FCC

[stefanlasiewski]

There is nothing wrong with your government. Do not attempt to adjust the leadership. We are now controlling the information. We control the horizontal and the vertical. We can deluge you with a thousand unwarranted wiretaps or expand one your phone call to crystal clarity and beyond. We can hear you now.

Re:FCC

[node 3]

No, you simply just don't understand. The Constitution is a document perfect in crafting. There is no fault with the Constitution. Any fault here is your lack of faith in the rightness of the Constitution.

If the Constitution doesn't explicitly address things like fire departments, libraries, schools, space programs, health care, nuclear weaponry or electromagnetic communications, those things clearly have absolutely no need for governmental attention. All problems related to any such issue can be completely, and solely, traced back to the fact that the government, in clear contravention of the US Constitution, has in some way addressed those issues.

The US Constitution isn't an imperfect document written by men, it is an infallible document which must never be questioned by imperfect men. To determine whether the doubter of the Constitution is an imperfect man (or women), one need only find the answer to one of two questions to be true:

1. Is that person part of the government (and not a libertarian)?
2. Is that person doubting the strict, literal and absolute reading of the Constitution?

And, if you think perhaps there are legitimate questions of interpretations of vague, ambiguous, or otherwise open-ended parts of the Constitution, you are wrong. The only valid interpretations must empower corporations, remove social responsibilities of individuals, and may, under no circumstances whatsoever, allow the government any powers beyond the enforcement of the amendments, using procedures outlined in the articles.

If a word (such as "privacy") does not exist within the Constitution, it does not exist for the government at all. The words "FCC" or "Federal Communications Commission" do not exist in the Constitution.

Re:Better than the iPhone

[sokoban]

We'll see. I'm guessing Google probably won't totally drop the ball on the software, but the hardware and integration between hardware and software will be interesting to see in the real world. Lots of companies make good hardware, and lots make good software, but Apple is usually better than most at integrating the two, which in a device like the iPhone or HTC "Dream" is pretty key.

Re:I looked at the Android software.

[andy1307]

You have to write you applications in Java. Which I do know but is some what limiting.

more limiting than objective-c?

t-mobile? why?

[randyest]

How unfortunate. Isn't t-mobile the smallest network in the US, with the least coverage, and no 3G/high-speed data whatsoever?

It was bad enough when Apple locked the iphone to AT&T, but at least they have some 3G and good coverage (after acquiring Cingular.) But t-mobile? That's not going to be good for business :(

Re:t-mobile? why?

[Vectronic]

Not good business? From which perspective?

I have no idea about which companies have better coverage than the next in the US, but if T-Mobile is indeed the smallest, then it makes a lot of sense for Google to partner up with them for their first(?) phone, the contracts are probably better than they would get from going with a bigger corporation, bit cheaper, not as much loss if it fails, and from T-Mobile's perspective, they can't really go wrong, since its already got them a lot of publicity, stocks probably went up, more website/store hits, etc...

As far as I am aware there is nothing keeping "Android" from also being used on any other phone that supports it (or vice versa), and that may happen more now if T-Mobile's attempt is even a moderate success.

Besides, its a little more demand for 3G/better networks, or at least more awareness of the need even if it does fail.

Knowing Verizon's tendencies...

[barzok]

to lock their phones down tight and wipe out the OEM software in favor of their own crap, the chances of me ever getting to use it are close to nil. T-Mobile's coverage is spotty at best in the areas my wife & I frequent, even AT&T can get iffy, so we're stuck with Verizon.

Re:Knowing Verizon's tendencies...

[EXrider]

Same here, I HATE Verizon. But I'm stuck with them for the coverage. GSM calls don't even work in my house unless I'm standing in front of my living room window.

Now, if I could get 802.11 roaming to make up for the loss of coverage in my house FOR A REASONABLE PRICE, I'd switch to a T-Mobile based Android in a second.

Re:Open markets.

[thanatos_x]

For all the reasons that you mention, it makes me very glad Google is around. In general they're responsible for opening up a lot of markets that would otherwise not happen.

Youtube doesn't make much money, but it enables other online video companies a respite because everyone targets youtube. Of course all this online video creates a huge demand for increased bandwidth. It creates more videos, since they can now be uploaded, and it creates more data that needs to be searched.

Even if Google doesn't make money directly, they make money indirectly, either one degree away (providing bandwidth, if they decide to enter this market) or two degrees away (providing search for competitors or other businesses needing to sort this data)

All in all it's very refreshing to see a company that competes, and isn't afraid of helping 'competitors' because it knows that it can make money off them. It is the antithesis of the anti-net neutrality argument. All this video we have to transport will kill us. We hate that we'll have a higher demand for our service! Stop online video!

Re:A video of the phone has been posted recently o

[bluesk1d]

Considering the writer is a clear Apple fanboy who has never seen or tested the Android OS or the new device, it cant be called a review. It's simply the author hoping it doesnt burst his iPhone bubble.

Re:Better than the iPhone

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple is better at integrating their own software and the hardware, but they have a tendency to put artificial restrictions in place to prevent that kind of integration between third-party apps and the hardware. Among other things, Apple's applications that come with the iPhone can run in the background and access the contents of the user's iPod...and those are just the two that you find out within 10 minutes of looking into what it would take to develop an app for the iPhone. When you dig deeper, there are quite a few artificial restrictions for app developers that go away when you decide to make your app non-official (i.e. require a jailbroken phone).

FWIW, I have an iPhone and generally love it. But all the apps I'd like to write for it (I've come up with 4 ideas so far) have run into some issue with an explicit decision Apple made in the SDK that makes them impossible. There's one app that I may end up writing using an undocumented work around, but I'm not sure I want to put in the effort because that API could change at any moment and there's a good chance Apple would refuse to distribute the app through the app store because of that.

If the Android SDK can focus on allowing third-party apps to have full access to the available hardware, the user experience will end up being better than on the iPhone. Initially, it will be worse since the basic apps that come with the phone won't feel as natural. But, over time, those apps will mature and third party apps will higher quality and more useful. I'm hoping that point in time is somewhere around the time my 2 year contract is up with AT&T because unless Apple opens up the SDK a lot more, I won't be getting another iPhone. As a developer, I'm not interested in any phone that prevents me from writing the kinds of apps that I want to write.

Re:t-mobile? why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps Google is also not taking the myopic view that the entire world market lives in the US. T-Mobile may be one of the smaller carriers in the US, but they have a lot larger presence than AT&T or Verizon do in Europe.

Then again, they've shown no indication that they're even considering tying Android's phones to any one carrier, so it's likely that T-Mobile just stepped up to the plate first and other carriers will follow suit if/when Android has been proven to be popular and work well.

Those are both things that Apple went the other way on by tying the iPhone to a single US carrier and delaying the release in Europe. Even the latest 3G release seems to have primarily targeted the US. If Android succeeds, hopefully it will spur Apple to open up the iPhone to any GSM carrier that wants to sell it. The iPhone has been hugely successful when there's very little to compete with it (Crackberry and Winblows Mobile don't really compete for the same market). But if there's a real alternative, Apple will have to do things differently or the iPhone won't be nearly as popular.

Re:But does it run Linux?

[Ma8thew]

The thing which is choking iPhone development right now is the absurd NDA, and the absolute control Apple has over the App store. The NDA prevents any discussions about development, if you want to see the frustrations caused by this, just follow Craig Hockenberry's Twitter feed. He's the developer of Twitterrific.

And why risk investing thousands in an iPhone app, if in the end, Apple can arbitrarily reject it? Not to mention the ridiculous wait times developers endure to push out updates, whilst Apple review them. Especially bad if you inadvertently ship a show stopper bug.

Apple needs to sort this stuff out, or iPhone development will gradually die out. Which would be a shame, because they managed to get an awful lot of developers very excited about it.

"T-Mobile Will Be First"

[LarsG]

Erm.. Shouldn't it be "HTC will be first"?

Something must be seriously broken with the cell phone market in the US when $cell_carrier is considered more important than $phone_manufacturer.

Re:Better than the iPhone

[ToasterMonkey]

Among other things, Apple's applications that come with the iPhone can run in the background and access the contents of the user's iPod...

If the Android SDK can focus on allowing third-party apps to have full access to the available hardware,

But, what you're asking for is full access to all the software. I don't think you're even going to get this on Android (or any phone in the near future).. your code all runs in a VM doesn't it? Hell, we don't even have full access to everything on OS X or Windows systems, just lots of clever work arounds that break in the next SP/release, right? Right now, how do you modify the iTunes DB without iTunes? Look what happened to anti-virus developers and Vista. Even Linux, about as open a system as you can get, doesn't go out of its way to let you do what you want with it. Give me a stable driver API.. errm, now, and for 5+ years? And can we get ZFS support merged please? Anyway, I think "being able to do something" isn't the same as "designed to allow you to do something". It's one notch higher than "designed not to allow you.." though :\

How about we focus more on functional software that helps us do useful things, rather than software that fucks around with our systems for the sake of it?
I know, I know, there are going to be many cases where a legitimate piece of functionality is held back because of artificial restrictions or real software limitations, but it just seems like most software is part of a big feedback loop, and when you step back, look at how it improves your life/business... wow... what are computers for again? Programming and fixing?

That's the only thing I really care about any platform, what are it's capabilities, what can it do, what DOES it do for me? In that light, both the iPhone and Android based systems seem to have equal potential to affect our lives, by making a few things a bit easier for us. But only one of them DOES much right now. They're both still just phones, and at best, PDAs :\

Re:A video of the phone has been posted recently o

[node 3]

Right. Because there's no way an open source product is going to have an awkward or otherwise clunky interface. This must be editorial bias, no other explanation is possible.