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"Nexus One" Is Google's Android Phone
xchg writes "It's still not called the 'Google Phone,' but the Nexus One — to be made by HTC — is as close as I think we're going to get. The WSJ cites sources familiar with Google's plans and says that Google has designed this handset and plans to sell it directly to consumers, unlocked."
Only in the US is the Droid a CDMA phone (see my previous comment further up about the Droid name.. it annoys me). The phone is however available in Europe in a GSM variant known as the Motorola Sholes/Milestone. The currently frequency bands though means it is relegated to edge speeds in the US as neither ATT nor Tmobile use the 900/2100 for 3g (UMTS/HSPA) that the phone has.
However if you go peruse the canadian motorola site, the Canadian version of the Sholes/Milestone uses 850/1900 for 3g, which is what ATT uses.... but its not available yet :(
Tmobile gets screwed either way as they use 1700 for 3G.. so unless the phone was made specifically for Tmo US, you will not get 3G speeds.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
Why?
I've seen people discuss this in other places and I just don't buy it, at least not in the near term. There are already lots of phones sold as unlocked-only in the US (see just about every smartphone made by Nokia), and carriers don't currently offer rate discounts for them simply because they're not taking advantage of the subsidy. In order for the Nexus One to have enough force in the market to force the carrier's hand on rates for unsubsidized phones it's going to have to be tremendously successful (I'm thinking iPhone-like numbers). The problem is that in order to do that, they have to sell the phone unsubsidized with the same rates as subsidized phones. Which makes the cost quite a bit more than competing, subsidized phones. Which makes it all the much harder to reach the critical mass where they can exert pressure on the carriers to cut rates.
Perhaps the Nexus is the phone that finally achieves this. But it's nowhere near a done deal. Even if the phone and the sales strategy were confirmed (which they aren't), it's going to take years before they have enough market force to make the carriers change their ways.
Agreed. I've always just gone out, bought a new phone outright, and whacked my existing SIM card in it when I got home. None of this contract crap. But from what I can tell it is very hard/impossible to do that in the US?
The carriers with better U.S.-wide coverage[1] use Qualcomm's CDMA2000 protocol stack.[2] Unlike GSM and UMTS phones, all of which store the service info on a UICC,[3] CDMA2000 phones are less likely to store the service info on a UICC.
[1] Not to be confused with international coverage, which isn't useful to people who never travel outside the United States. AT&T has advertised better coverage than competing carriers that operate in the United States, with the fine print stating "worldwide". But in the States, there's a map for that.
[2] Not to be confused with CDMA modulation, which is also used by UMTS, the 3G successor to GSM.
[3] A removable smart card that holds mobile phone service information. It's commonly called a "SIM", "USIM", or "CSIM" card if it holds service info for GSM, UMTS, or CDMA2000 respectively.
My bill does. I call the carrier and haggle them down on the price after the contract is up, since I can leave and it's cheaper for them to discount the service than to acquire a customer from scratch.