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T-Mobile To Launch Android Tablet
nandemoari writes "T-Mobile is planning to use Google's open source operating system 'Android' on devices that blur the line between cellphone and home PC. In addition, Samsung says they will also produce Android phones, but need to work out the kinks first. Both announcements come shortly after HP revealed that it is investigating the idea of using Android to power some of its low-cost netbook computers in place of Windows."
It's my understanding that Android is a mobile OS based in Linux so why do we need to feature new phones? Can't we take an already popular model (like the Chocolate or Razr or whatever the devil it is the kids consume these days) and just compile it down to match the architecture and write the drivers for the devices on the phone?
I mean, I've got Linux running on my Nintendo DS from a community effort and it seems to support much of the DS' devices like the touch screen. You're telling me Google or Samsung or interested parties couldn't do the same for an existing phone? Am I missing something regarding hardware requirements? I mean, I know it uses Java libraries for the applications but a lot of existing phones should be beefy enough for that, right?
My work here is dung.
Wouldn't this be more of a palm device than a tablet PC?
I've been debating on learning to write software for the iPhone or the Android OS. I'm thinking if T-Mobile has a nice tablet PC based on Android that this will probably make me decide to go with Android since it uses technologies I already know how to work with.
...the year of Android on the...urm..netbook!
No, nobody is as lame as Verizon.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
why do we need to feature new phones?
Because the phone manufacturers and networks would love you to buy a new phone and sign a new 2 year contract. If they allowed you to upgrade your software, the only company that wins is Google.
quite simple, they are in it for the sales. putting android on an old phone won't increase sales much (at the cost of development) while creating a newer product will. phones are ever moving and advancing so spending extra to support older products won't benifit the company as much. Android may change this eventually (where support for legacy phones becomes cheaper) but for now, it's easier for them to just create a new phone with a ui designed around android instead of trying to hack it in on older phones.
> ... that blur the line between cellphone and home PC.
I always wanted a desktop cellphone.
...but it seems to me that there are probably rather specific requirements for an Android Phone in order to ensure compatibility across all the platforms (which seems counter-intuitive to the concept of an open platform...) Like they should all be touchscreen, have GPS, accelerometer, and have really good battery life and an efficient low-energy processor. Still, you would think that such phones could be found and equipped with Android. I guess everyone just wants something 'new' even if it is just the same-old in new packaging.
This doesn't seem like a good idea to me. I'll be happy to admit I'm wrong if they make something great, but this just strikes me as a device that we don't need.
A cell phone (I've got an iPhone) is designed to be portable. I'm just not going to use a portable 8" tablet all the time. A cell phone should be small, but it's portable so I can whip it out at any time to look something up.
Something larger, a home PC, is too big. Even if we take something like a netbook, it's bigger than something I want to carry around all the time. I don't think there are enough people who will want to carry something that size around all the time.
I'd expect battery life to be a problem, at least if you want to keep it light.
There may be a reason that people aren't rushing to buy stuff bigger than Nokia 810s. As other cell phones get more powerful and easier to use for the web, there doesn't seem to be a big reason to carry something bigger. You quickly get to the point where a netbook would fit you better.
But something between a netbook and a cell phone? I'm skeptical of the size of that market.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Yes we totally can do that. In fact, many people already have. The hard part is writing the drivers with no hardware documentation.
BTW, the HP article linked to is hosed.
Try: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123852934905974845.html
Why use Android on a netbook? Will we get the same vibrant community that the Asus Eee PC has - with many custom Linux distros available, most a vast improvement on the crap that Asus ships them with - with HP & Adroid?
1. Joe Sixpack is gonna use whatever OS is on the device they buy.
2. Commercial driver support is needed for this to avoid the hell that linux drivers can become.
People using Android on a phone do not want to mess with the OS on their appliance. For adoption to happen, people must have a smooth transition, and a cobbled-together Android distro for $HARDWARE will turn off a lot of potential users.
That said, do you really want an Android with a Razor? What could it possible need to shave?!.
Or an Android with a Chocolate, or a Blackberry? My wife would leave me in a second for a robot that takes orders and comes bearing sweets.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
A more important question is why Android? To answer my own question, it is marketing and the value of attaching Google to the phone. Doesn't matter that the phone runs Linux, what matters is the phone is attached to Google. It is an interesting shift in ownership of mobile phones. The iPhone is an Apple product, not an AT&T phone. Will Google follow the MS PC model and like Windows PC by Dell will become Android phone by Samsung?
Interesting, could be my next generation carputer.
o_O
This from the same Google-TMO marriage that prohibits tethering? The same Google that can't keep your documents private, even when they want to? Does Android run MS Office? (Note, that's MS Office, not something-allegedly-compatible-with) TMO has shown promise in the past, and was the price/performance leader for years. But today, their pricing is at best, competitive, and typically worse than ATT, Verizon, and Sprint. While their VOIP implementation is pretty spiffy, the billing options aren't so groovy, and call handoff just doesn't work. They don't seem to want to keep their customers happy. I'll be passing, again.
why do we need to feature new phones?
I love how people are so naive. Companies are not interested in selling you good quality reliable products. They are only interested in you giving them your money, and will do whatever it takes, but absolutely nothing more, to get it. So yeah, T-Mobile could simply update the software and give everyone great new features for their existing hardware, but then that would keep people from buying new hardware.
Don't like this situation? Then STOP BUYING STUFF. Start personally valuing reliability and longevity over trendiness and chrome-content.
As someone who has been around a while, I will not hold my breath that anything will ever change.
ripoff.
The CTIA 2009 conference was just a few weeks ago and there was almost no news on Android. Now we are hearing from many vendors who where there but showed and said nothing about these products. I even saw one post where a reporter had to ask about Android to find out they were going to ship an Android phone mid-2009. That same reporter noticed that this vendor was only announcing Windows Mobile 7 stuff at the show and _that_ wasn't even targetted for 2009.
Now that we are starting to see/hear about Android products and phones, it really blows me away that businesses still let Microsoft sucker them into defining their marketing. I would not like to see Google or anyone else have to resort to paying customers to pre-announce and pre-promote their products to stall or diminish the value of the partners other products. But this is classic Microsoft and not any new and improved Microsoft. They've done this in the 80s and 80s so change is not in their blood. But what is up with these companies how let them do this and take their money while allowing them to dictate what their customers want, need, or deserve? Does $$$ really buy everything including the future of your company?
It's good to see someone is finally talking about new product showing up this year. I still wonder what kinds of backroom pressure is being exerted to limit these kinds of things.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
It's my understanding that Android is a mobile OS based in Linux [wikipedia.org] so why do we need to feature new phones? Can't we take an already popular model (like the Chocolate or Razr or whatever the devil it is the kids consume these days) and just compile it down to match the architecture and write the drivers for the devices on the phone?
The motorola razr2 v8 already comes with Linux:
https://opensource.motorola.com/sf/projects/razr2v8
Loser idiot....
The whole user interface is based around a touchscreen where you drag elements around. It would be pointless on a device with just a keypad.
I think the next logical step is to bring to market something between the mobile/PDA and a netbook. I thought the 7" screen of the eeepc was more than enough for me.
I want something small to bring with me to read the internet, check mail, write mail and do simple online tasks. What i dont want in any way, shape or form is a small Windows computer. I want it to just work and no computer has ever done that for me like a mobile phone can.
An android phone with a bigger screen, about 5-6" would suite my needs perfect for this. I dont want something like a laptop that you drag between power outlets, its got to have good battery time. I have android on my openmoko and i love the UI, the apps and the general structure and thinking behind it. For a handheld computer its just perfect.
Sadly the netbooks took the wrong development thanks to Microsofts heavy subsidising and marketing preassure, from small to bigger to ordinary Windows laptops. The market for small cheap Mobilephones/PDA with constant uplink is still there untapped. Whoever comes first with a priceworthy gadget will win that race.
HTTP/1.1 400
Cellphone specifications are usually very closed. However, since HTC makes the T-Mobile G1, and its internals are very similar to HTC's other smartphones, it has been ported to some of them, although it is still a work in progress.
if you were to create a technology to do these three thing, people would call it marketing.
sign me up for one
A small device with very long battery life. Also, the Android SDK with Eclipse plugins is a nice dev environment, so there may be lots of small usefull apps. That said, a tablet device might need different types of apps (e.g. geo location may not be of as much use?)
They have projectors the size card decks.
Project the screen, the keyboard, and the mouse when you want a PC. The rest of the time, carry it around and use it like a cell phone.
It's so obvious that I'm sure someone is working on it.
This is why I bought an iPhone.
3.0 coming in June.
Here's what I'd like to see in a new tablet. But I doubt I'll see it.
A4 or A5 sized screen
E-ink or similar
Touch-like/pen interface (maybe with a decent type of protection for the screen, like thin layer of glass)
Slimmed down UI for browing and viewing documents. (Linux seems a safe bet here, even gives you access to better flash storage optimizations)
Custom program for displaying pdf-files and the like, where you can write on top of the document. Doesn't have to do recognition, I just want to to put a second layer on top of the file so I can highlight stuff and make my own notes
Wifi + sim-card + 3G compatability
Essentially an e-book with better compatability for your own stuff. Hell, if you do it right you could add your own "layers" to websites and just save the interesting bits.
Since it'd use e-ink, you're not looking for super fast performance, so go for a nice ARM processor for better battery life.
Ah, well. I can dream, can't I?
and your argument states what? Iphone or Gphone, they both came with an operating system and both can be upgraded.
You didn't get the IPhone OS on an old phone, nor will you. This is why apple stans, get looked at as being crazy people....
Because mobile phone hardware architecture is far from being standard. There are too many options and no standards to speak off. It can have two processors (application and baseband), or one, or the two can reside on the same die. There multitude of buses and interfaces. It takes many man years to create a decent mobile phone (Openmoko anyone ?)
you can do this in Europe because they have an open system and people buy phones and then pick what service they went to enable for this phone. You know, competition on performance of the network. Here in the US, it's all about the lockin and preventing competition. The Telco's sell the phones already customized and tied to their service so you have to buy the phones from them in most cases. You can find unlocked phones but they are usually 2+ year old models already or going out of production. Telco's don't like you doing this.
Actually, Android is having some fits because the US Telco's don't want to give up their lockins so they must find ways to block and lock Android features on their networks. They don't like VOIP for instance.
It also doesn't help that there are a few different networks playing here with little sign of any one winner so the Telco's have the phone radio as another lockin/lockout method.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I'm thinking if T-Mobile has a nice tablet PC based on Android that this will probably make me decide to go with Android since it uses technologies I already know how to work with.
The question you need to ask is, are you writing stuff mostly for yourself or for other people to use? Are you thinking to write something targeting the tablet specifically?
On the iPhone, free or paid app you are going to get a larger user base.
On Android, you are going to have a smaller number of people using the app but potentially more flexibility (I say potentially because there are some areas where the iPhone currently has greater capabilities (like touch API support or working with media) than Android while the Android platform is of course more open in how you can manipulate the system with an application).
It may well be a good idea to target Android initially and see if your idea works well on a mobile device, but the iPhone does have a learning curve and it helps to learn with an idea that interests you.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Google controls the distribution and if TMO pushes google not to update the G1 someone will port the new software like we are already seeing with the custom HTC magic firmware hacks.
If you are going to spew crap at least do some research first.
According to engineers I know the Android OS "phones home" every day and uploads an encrypted payload. Can this be confirmed? If so, what is it that is being uploaded?
If you had a G1 or newer hardware, you'd have never asked the question, because you'd know that the second question's answer is yes, and in a big way .
You might be able to run Android on the Motorola RaZr, but what would be the point?
... and that is just off the top of my head. I suspect the processing power in the Razr also doesn't compare, but I could be wrong there.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Android is Open Source . Did you miss the memo?
Google only wins if we win. It is a symbiotic, and very healthy relationship type known as interdependence, which you may want to read about here.
Oh yeah, and one final thing. Google already won. We already won. I have a G1 running Linux with root access and the ability to cross-compile whatever kernel, libraries, and applications I want and install, boot, and use them.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
>quite simple, they are in it for the sales. putting android on an old phone won't increase sales much (at the cost of development) while creating a newer product will. Considering that the carriers get little from the phones themselves, having an upgradeable phone gives the carrier a guaranteed revenue stream rather than a worry about what new phone to cram down the throats of the consumer.
---- Liquid was a patriot ----
screen a minimum size (bigger than most current cell phones)
touch screen
storage
net access of some kind
gps/compass/g sensors etc
My wife would leave me in a second for a robot that takes orders and comes bearing sweets.
Fortunately for you I'm already married -- what's that honey... OK, I'll have it ready in a minute -- GTG.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
I'd like to see a cellphone that you could plug into a wired jack.
That would often let you make calls more cheaply and reliably. It would presumably use a lot less battery power, and you might be able to charge the phone off the phoneline. And you would have all your stored contacts, messages and whatnot in the phone, so you wouldn't have to rekey anything.
It would probably need some sort of "locale" support, so that you could use different prefixes when dialling via the cell network or via the landline network, but that's doable.
I don't know if the wired network supports SMS, but it would be very handy.
Conceivably 3-way calling would be possible too.
Will Google's Android may be replaced by Microsoft Windows Mobile. But sure is the phone will more than now.
It's why I'm convinced advertising is the curse of the 20th Century and the bane of the new millennium.
OK right now there are more iPhones than Android phones out there. I bet in 3 years time Androids will outnumber iPhones by 3 to 1 or better, as there's just the one iPhone and the one carrier for it (usually) but a near infinite possible range of 'Droids..
Yes, there will be many more Android phones in the next few years. However there are a ton of Windows Mobile phones right now, and that has not stopped the iPhone from surpassing them in sales. What I see in a few years is the iPhone OS having a commanding lead (in part due to Touch sales, which isn't really a phone but acts to expand the platform userbase), with Android and the Palm Pre fighting it out for second, possibly Windows Mobile in fourth though I think they've taken too long to react.
Also coming up this year is the halfway mark for AT&T exclusivity - can Android overtake the iPhone before that platform goes to all carriers? It seems unlikely to me given the lead that exists.
There is a very large network effect from the number of apps the iPhone has, and Apple really does have a lead on the platform and API currently that I do not think will slip much.
The Palm Pre is the real wildcard here, I think it will do pretty well but it's hard to say just how well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If your wife does say she's leaving you for a robot, remind her of the sexual issues. I'm told their lovemaking is rather mechanical.
You can buy unlocked phones in the U.S., too. On AT&T's and T-Mobile's networks, there's nothing preventing you from doing it. Verizon and the other CDMA carriers are a bit tougher, and you do admittedly get mostly older phones on the secondary market there, but that's what you get for going with a proprietary, non-standard technology.
I use T-Mobile and have bought my own GSM phones for years; sometimes I've chosen to buy phones that are a few years behind the bleeding edge because I'm a cheap bastard, but I certainly haven't been forced to. I think most Americans don't do this because they're addicted to the subsidy business model that the carriers promote in order to lock customers in. The subsidies have deflated their idea of what a phone ought to cost, down to a level that's far less than fair market value. Phones that are at least $100 are "free," and something like the iPhone 3G which is probably at least a $500 product (I think it goes for even more than that, sold legitimately unlocked in jurisdictions where the law requires that option), is "$200".
But if you want to buy an unlocked phone you can do that, and you can run whatever software you want to on it. On my Nokia E61, for instance, I have a WiFi tethering program (JoikuSpot -- it's awesome) and the phone has a SIP VOIP client and a VPN client built right into the operating system. And it has none of the remote-update or kill-switch "features" that seem to be de rigueur on branded smartphones. No bullshit tie-in to a proprietary application store or code-signing requirements, either -- you can download and run all the crap from the Internet you want. You can buy one right now, drop your SIM card in, and away you go.
If people buy subsidized and/or crippled phones through their cell carriers than they pretty much deserve the crippled pieces of shit that they get. Good phones without restrictions are there for the buying if you're willing to pay what they actually cost, and what people in other countries routinely pay.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I always wanted a desktop cellphone.
Cell phones designed for home use are sort of the 'next big thing,' at least to the cell companies. Each of the 3 major carriers seems to either have one out already, or in the works.
It makes sense -- right now, they've pretty much saturated the market for cell phones: I don't know a man, woman, or child in the U.S. that wants a cell phone that doesn't have one (people who truly can't afford them excepted, although the barrier to entry is getting lower by the month; there are some prepaid phones that verge on being disposable they're so cheap). Once you've put a device in everybody's pocket in the country, where can you go? The logical step is to start chipping away at the other places where they still use non-cell phones. Offices are tough (you have PBXes and complex switching requirements), so instead the carriers are going for the remaining home phones.
To me it seems a bit ironic that the "smart home phone" -- a mythical central-hub unit that does voice, video, and text communication, plus provides news and other information feeds -- which has been a broken promise from wireline phone companies for literally decades, is finally going to be delivered ... only the network behind it will be a wireless one, not POTS, and far from being the local telcos' salvation, it may be the final nail in their coffin. (That is, unless they really get over their reluctance and embrace a future of being bit-pushing broadband ISPs.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
that's what I said in one sentence. The fact that people can't purchase the latest greatest phones for any network is a limiting factor. We'll see if Android eventually breaks that model in the US.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus