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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."
From the summary:
Come on, link! I'm lazy!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
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?
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.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
more limiting than objective-c?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!