Google's Nexus One Phone Launches

The press conference at the Googleplex is over and Google's Nexus One phone has launched (official Google blog announcement). The NY Times confirms the bare details: manufactured by HTC; $529 unlocked, $179 with 2-year T-Mobile contract; coming to Verizon in the US, and Vodaphone in Europe, in "Spring 2010." The Times notes one desirable feature: "[Google] has also voice-enabled all text boxes in the device, so a user can speak into the device to, for instance, compose an e-mail, rather than type the text of the email." Walt Mossberg points out one limitation: "On the Nexus One, only 190 megabytes of its total 4.5 gigabytes of memory is allowed for storing apps. On the $199 iPhone, nearly all of the 16 gigabytes of memory can be used for apps." No answers yet to the obvious questions: can it tether on T-Mobile? Will it allow VoIP?

Comments

So what's the difference?

[bezking]

It seems like this is just another HTC (?) made device... Beside the tts capacity, does anyone know what really sets this thing apart from the Droid\G1\etc??? This may finally be the spark I need to leave ATT, so what makes this thing so great??

I was hoping for a new business model

[astrashe]

I'm pretty underwhelmed by the announcement.

I have an iPhone, I live in NYC, and my network is terrible. That's exactly the kind of problem markets are supposed to solve, right? I should ditch AT&T and go with a competitor.

The problem is that my phone cost $300, the Apple Care costs $70 (and you need it because the battery is sealed into the phone, and won't last 2 years), and there's a $175 early termination fee. So walking away is pretty expensive.

This Google phone will have essentially the same deal. You'll still be tied to a carrier, and it will be expensive to walk away. Maybe Verizon or T-Mobile will be a lot better than AT&T. Or maybe when many millions of people buy these data hungry phones in a short period of time, their networks will sink just like AT&T's has.

We need to commoditize wireless bandwidth. We want a universe in which we buy our phones directly, we own them, and we can choose which networks to plug them into. And if a network is bad, we have to be free to walk.

These walled gardens are always going to give us crummy throughput, unreliable service, and restrictions on the apps we can run. Just swapping one corporation (T-Mobile) for another (AT&T) isn't going to fix anything. Maybe they'll be marginally better. But without a real market operating, and the ability for us to move around in response to the quality of service we receive, we'll never get a good wireless network.

Re:I was hoping for a new business model

[yincrash]

unsubsidized phone + cheaper tmobile plan than the one bundled with the subsidized phone is cheaper over a period of two years.
plus the ability to jump ship to att at any time with no repercussions.

Re:I was hoping for a new business model

[farble1670]

This Google phone will have essentially the same deal. You'll still be tied to a carrier, and it will be expensive to walk away.

an important part of the announcement is that they are selling an unlocked, GSM phone for $530. sounds like a lot, but depending on the plan you chose you can end up saving money over the course of what would be a 2-year contract. if you are complaining about being tied to GSM networks, you can hardly blame google for that.

In Soviet Russia, phone owns you...

[chogori]

What's up with these arbitrary phone OS limitations? I would've hoped that at least Google would've gotten it right, but alas.

I hate to say this, but between my iPhone and my WinMo, I think I like my WinMo phone the best.
Don't get me wrong, it sucks. The UI is terrible. And it crashes. A lot.

However:

- Want to thether for free even though your carrier wants you to pay extra? There's a WinMo app for that.

- Want to thether for free via your phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot so that everyone in your carpool can access the interenet at once? There's a WinMo app for that, too.

- Hell, I can even run two programs at once and mount my phone as a disk drive and fill it up with whatever I damn well please.

Seems like pretty basic/essential functionality to me.

Re:Mossberg is an Apple fanboi, valid point though

[FileNotFound]

This is only a non issue if the app itself is tiny. What about if the app is graphics intensive? I think "Defender Chronices" for the iPhone is 125Mb all by itself and Dungeon Hunter is 225Mb.

So to get around this stupid limitation an app would need to come with a loader that would then download the remaining data to the SD card.

Over hyped? Not if you play games. Either way it's a pretty stupid and a major design limitation.

Re:Mossberg is an Apple fanboi, valid point though

[TooMuchToDo]

For now Android is a toy while the iphone is well ahead as a tool to get work done

A toy that lets us develop our own datacenter management tools and deploy them to our employees without having to suck Apple's App Store dick.