18 Android Phones, In 3 Flavors, By Year's End

Hugh Pickens writes "Andy Rubin, senior director for Mobile Platforms for Google, has announced that by the end of the year there will be 18 to 20 phones using the Android OS made by 8 or 9 different manufacturers. Google will offer three different versions of Android OS: a completely free and generic flavor with no pre-loaded Google applications; a slightly customized version that comes pre-loaded with Google apps like Gmail and Google Calendar; and a completely 'Google-fied' Android OS bearing all sorts of Google branding and integration with Google's services. Will Park reports that the expectation is that 12 to 14 of the upcoming Android phones will use the slightly-customized version of Google's Android OS requiring the manufacturer to agree to a distribution deal with Google that would allow the handsets to come pre-installed with Google-ware. The remaining 5 or 6 Android phones will come to market completely decked out with 'The Google Experience' and a Google logo on the phone. This third option provides risk and reward opportunities because the openness of the store could be a hit with consumers, but could also lead to poorly constructed or offensive applications that could give Google a taint. When it comes to apps, Rubin says: 'We want to abide by the law, but not rule with an open fist.'" Yes, it seems he really said "open fist," though he probably meant "iron fist."

Comments

A Suggestion

[Bangmaker]

Personally I think google can either epically win or fail with this move. One thing I see as very important is making sure not all of the phones are smartphones. The article suggests that several service providers will be in on the deal (already a step above apple in my opinion), however, if every phone delivered is a smartphone, much of the market will be lost. Not everyone can afford the expenses of internet and email that come with a smartphone. I would get the phone simply because it was running Andriod even if it weren't a smartphone.

Re:A Suggestion

[ianmacfarlane]

A non-smart Android phone seems a bit like an oxymoron. I think that for people who don't want a smartphone and just want to make phone calls, Android isn't the right solution. That said, for people like you who want Android but don't want a phone, the future looks fairly bright, with Android being ported to netbooks and probably all sorts of other devices (I'd expect an iPod-touch competitor at some point).

Re:A Suggestion

[0xdeadbeef]

One thing I see as very important is making sure not all of the phones are smartphones.

Every phone is a smartphone. At this point, the distinction is as meaningless as the distinction between smartphone and PDA five years ago, when people were making noise about the supposed "death" of the PDA. It is all marketing gibberish. And in another five years, you'll have to go out of your way to not get a data plan.

What matters now is what platform the phone runs, and whether it allows the installation of applications from anywhere, or only from a centralized store and blessed by the manufacturer, or only from a centralized store and blessed by the carrier, or not at all. Google is putting a stake in the ground for the first category, the open category, the one that resembles computers as we all know them. Apple and the carriers want to turn phones into consoles.

The Open Fist?

[drinkypoo]

Maybe he was just trying to coin a new term. He was talking about bitch-slapping.

edition names?

[societyofrobots]

Google Home Basic

Google Home Premium

Google Business

Google-fied Ultimate

Competition brings Innovation

[Celeste R]

Alternatives to Apple's store are looking better and better. Sure, the company-branded software will be there, but being able to compete(!) gives Google a significant incentive to provide continually more functionality in its own software.

Comparing Apple(s) to (google) Oranges isn't always easy though... mostly because the gphones haven't been made publicly available. Time will tell, and it's my opinion that Google is going about this in a fairly well thought out manner.

Re:Competition brings Innovation

[stewbacca]

Seriously good point! While people are always bitching about Apple "lock-in", you can't deny that Apple's "lock-in" drives innovation from competitors. In the end, everyone wins.

Re:Competition brings Innovation

[HateBreeder]

It's not apple's "lock-in" that drives innovation.. it's apples success in a certain new area of the market, that makes other players want their share of the pie.

The whole "open" and "free" talk from google is mostly marketing. I won't believe for a second that google went into the phone market out of ideology or the urge to make a "free" and "open" phone platform. They have a business model behind every move they make - and they are moving one step closer to having complete surveillance over their users.

Android should scare mainstream phone makers

[Dr. Spork]

I was looking at a Chinese iphone knockoff, thinking that the hardware seems decent, but I wouldn't trust the knockoff operating system. With Android, though, the cheap knockoff can legally have the very same operating system, since they don't have to pay license fees. This means that if Samsung or whoever come up with a neato handset that makes them lots of money, three months later a Chinese factory will be making identical-looking knockoffs with the same Google-made software. This might even be legal! If I were a handset manufacturer, I'd be very scared of the openness of Android, but as a consumer, I would seriously take a second look at those Chinese knockoffs that will soon come our way.

Re:Android should scare mainstream phone makers

[david.given]

I was looking at a Chinese iphone knockoff, thinking that the hardware seems decent, but I wouldn't trust the knockoff operating system. With Android, though, the cheap knockoff can legally have the very same operating system, since they don't have to pay license fees.

Indeed; a lot of the Chinese family-industry phones are technically fascinating (and quite cheap). Having a real OS would make them much more attractive.

Unfortunately, it's not quite that easy --- remember that Android is designed for a two-chip system, where one processor runs the user apps (and is the one running Android), and another processor running a quite different operating system handles the GSM stack. On the G1, for example, there's a massive 20MB-or-so operating system image for the radio processor. This usually runs some embedded OS like Nucleus, and is highly proprietary, signed to be tamper-proof, and is deeply regulated; in most countries, tinkering with the radio image will cause your local telecommunications regulator to slap you round the face with lawsuits before you can blink.

I don't know where the Chinese knockoffs get their GSM stack but it's probably ripped off from a commercial product --- copyright doesn't mean much there. Which means they're probably not properly licensed by the GSM people, which means that it's very unlikely you'll be able to legally operate them in other countries. They may work, but that doesn't guarantee anything --- and if the device has a bug in its GSM stack which causes a local outage, you'll be in a world of legal pain.

If updates are free, why buy new phones?

[ianmacfarlane]

Given the fact that Android updates (well, the one update) thus far have been free (the G1 update to Cupcake), how are the carriers going to encourage people to buy new handsets every 18 months? Obviously there can be things like improve cameras, sexier designs, bigger screens, faster processors etc, but I can see a lot of people sticking with what they've got for longer if the experience when using the phone is exactly the same. Obviously the carriers could also try rather artificial things like tying new services with new contracts etc, but I don't see that being so successful.

You forgot ...

[Norsefire]

Beta.

18-20 phones

[mrv00t]

...announced that by the end of the year there will be 18 to 20 phones using the Android OS...

Doesn't sound like awfully lot to me. That's like about 2 phones sold per month.

Features I'm Looking For in My Next Phone

[Greyfox]

• Wifi (Must be able to connect to my home network at home)
• SIP Client (Must be able to connect to my Asterisk server at home)
• Bluetooth tethering for a MacBook Pro (For those rare times when I'm not near a wifi access point.)

A few years back I bought an unlocked Nokia E70 and that provided all this functionality, but T-Mobile kept breaking the data plan so I couldn't use the phone with my notebook. This rendered the data plan pretty much worthless, since doing anything on its postage-stamp-sized screen pretty much sucked. The battery life also wasn't that great, though you're never going to get awesome battery life doing what I was doing with it.

An unlocked Android phone would be capable of doing all that stuff but probably not on a 3G network. Nokia's E90 communicator also has all the features I want, a bigger screen than the E70 and a beefed up battery. I'd probably have to import one again, though. And I'd need to find a provider the phone is compatible with who allows tethering.

A good half of my cell phone woes are due to cell company suckage here in the states. The features I'm after have been widely available in Europe for ages now and we can't even manage them here even with the iPhone forcing things forward.