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Google Nexus One Hands-On, Video, and Impressions
wkurzius writes "Engadget has gotten their hands on a Nexus One and have put their first impressions up for the world to see, including whether or not they think it's the 'be-all-end-all Android phone / iPhone eviscerator.' Their opinion? 'Not really.'"
It's feature-locked. It only has the hardware to work fully on T-Mobile. Like the article says, take it to AT&T and you can't reach the frequencies they do 3G data on. It's not a bad design trade-off... why give the T-Mobile users hardware they don't need, when a majority of customers with an unlocked device would take it to T-Mobile because of their "unsubsidized hardware, cheaper service" pricing?
If you want a commercially sold phone that is hacker-friendly, I'd advise the Nokia N900. Have you considered that?
Get a Nokia N900 if you want that killer feature.
Debian ... check ... check ... check
root access
ssh + screen
apt-get install damn near anything ... CHECK!
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Nokia took a big turn a few years ago, dropping the "free after service provider subsidy" models in favor of going very geek. I had one of their recent phones earlier this year while I was waiting for my subsidy to get an iPhone to come available.
The initial failures of the Ovi App Store were annoying, and with only the built in apps available to me it needed some work. They're racing in the same division as much bigger fish called Apple and Google, but they seem to have a neat device in the Booklet 3G... just a plain Windows netbook with a $300 provider discount making it $299.99, and Best Buy was kicking in another $100 to make it $199.99 over the holidays. The killer feature on this one is a solid battery.
They're really going for the geeks... but are there enough geeks who will pass on both Apple on AT&T and Google on Verizon and T-Mobile?
I can't see exactly what's wrong with this phone. All that was meant by the "not really," I think, is that it isn't mindblowingly superior to other Android phones. It looks very nice.
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In Q3 2009 Nokia sold 16.16 million smart phones. Apple sold 7.04 million.
Apple's market share is certainly growing, but in the world of cell phones, they don't come much larger than Nokia.
I'm in a true fringe area... there's two farm's fields within eyesight of where I sit.
Are you sitting on the fence?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
No multitouch? Okay.
No physical keyboard? Okay.
No multitouch AND no physical keyboard? Sorta fatal combination.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Hmm, I think I'll wait a few years for them to release the Nexus Six. Maybe it'll come with a Voight-Kampff machine built in.
Slashdot: news for Apple. Stuff that Apple.
Agreed, I have a Samsung Galaxy (which has an AMOLED screen), and indoors it looks amazing, way better than my friends' iPhones' screens. Introduce direct sunlight though, and you're looking at a dull, dark-grey mess.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
Ah, but this is what Google wants everyone to believe. They want you to think that they're just messing around and dabbling in every tech-related market. But the truth is far more subtle and interesting.
Google's real product, its core focus, has always been and remains its analytics. Everything they have developed or acquired--GMail, Maps, YouTube, Android, and of course, Google search--has been about one thing, and one thing only: gathering data and analyzing it in order to better match the consumer with the advertiser. You want to know/buy something. Someone else wants to tell/sell it to you. And Google's entire business model is about profiting off the need to make this connection efficient.
When viewed in this context, it becomes crystal clear why they have their hands in all these seemingly disparate technologies. They have a huge advantage, in that by cross-indexing the data they have collected on you, they can have a very complete picture of your preferences. It doesn't matter that YouTube doesn't turn a profit on its own. It doesn't matter that GMail and Android are free. In a sense, these things are not really products. They're more like...well, bait. They are a means to understand you better, and in turn, sell that understanding to people who want to sell you their products. Therefore, you are not Google's customer. The advertisers, the ones who pay Google for their analytics, are their real customers.
Given Microsoft's recent unveiling of Bing (and their "cashback" program), it appears that MS management still doesn't understand Google's strategy. They are trying to compete in this one area, thinking that if they could attract people to use their search engine, they would be competitive. While that tactic might have worked a decade ago, it's much too late now. They are throwing money at the problem because they don't understand that Google is successful because they offer services that are free, easy to use, and effective, then take the data they collect and sell that knowledge to advertisers. They have misunderstood in the same way that people misunderstand why Google developed all these different technologies and offered them for free.
It's also one more reason why I won't use Android, despite how good it is. I already use too many Google services. I don't need them to know even more about me than they already do.
So you can buy a Nexus One for $530 and pick up a data SIM for $29 a month. You get unlimited voice, unlimited SMS. I think the data SIM is capped at 5 gigs/month....which at 4 minutes/megabyte comes to thousands of 'minutes' a month. 5 gig is a little sparse for watching youtube videos, but more than adequate for finding information and checking maps.
2 year cost comes to $1,226. Iphone 3G two year cost is $1,975. Pretty substantial savings.
I would guess that google voice is/will be a ton more flexible than other voice providers...can probably do VoIP using wifi whenever you are near a hotspot. Can most likely auto-forward to a home VOIP system whenever you are at home or the phone is turned off. If you have wireless internet at home and at work (who doesn't?), that basically means unlimited everything whenever you are there.
Better display and better hardware than the iphone as well.
To be honest, this sounds like a winner. This smartphone can do many of the tasks of a real PC, yet the 2 year cost is about what you'd pay on the cheapest plan offered by a major wireless provider in the United States.
I honestly think Google is a lot smarter than that... they don't sell data to the advertisers. Google keeps that data in house and simply decides which ads to show to which viewers. Selling that data would be like a dairy farmer selling his cows. In fact, that's one thing that almost makes me trust my data with Google... they don't want their competitors getting their hands on that data. It's not a kind heart and dedication to not being evil that drives Google to keep your data safe... it's pure financial self interest (and not even the enlightened variety.)
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
I doubt that the antenna is the actual problem. From what I remember and it has been a long time 20 years since I did any serious antenna design. You actually need longer antennas for lower frequencies eg 1/2 the wavelength for a dipole and 1/4 for a whip antenna. So the phone antenna can be quite small. Similarly I would be surprise if you couldn't make a fairly broad band antenna at for a mobile. The biggest problem with broadband antennas is impedance mismatching and hence VSWR problems mainly for TX. As you move up the frequency a given antenna can generally operate over a wider band more easily because the wavelength difference between the antenna length and the TX frequency becomes for a given TX band. A 20MHz (capital M for Mega not small for milli) TX band at 100 MHz will give you ~ a 20% variance in wavelength which is larger than the wavelength variation from 1.7 GHz to 2GHz.
Having said that I haven't done any RF design for phones so there may be some gotchas antenna wise that I am not aware of but I suspect the problem if it is a space problem may come from other front end requirements such as the high Q crystal filters, diplexer if they use one, and power amp (depending on design) but I am only guessing. Certainly there are lots of small quad band phones that seem to have solved this problem. Expense is another factor.