Slashdot Mirror
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?
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??
Since T-Mobile already allows VOIP without any problems on their existing phones and data plans, and since the Android app store has at least two good SIP applications why would there be any question if VOIP is allowed or not?
No LTE. Less space than a drobo. Meh.
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
For this current model, I think the voice feature will be the most significant: every text field is voice enabled, making the touchscreen-only keyboard a bit less painful.
If they use the same technology as they use for the Google Voice transcriptions then it won't be so useful. My experience is that it gets 20-25% of the words right. SOMETIMES the transcriptions I get are enough to get the jist of what the call was about - other times it's like a bad babblefish version of it.
Unless they're using something different, I think Voice Recognition has a long way to do - and may never quite be there. Heck even for real people it's hard to understand just what someone said.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
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.
Not true. You only think this because your phone gave you brain cancer.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Is anyone else sick of this contract subsidizing excuse? Yes, I realize you can't sell a phone like this for $25, but all these phones have an insane price if you buy them out of contract. I have a hard time believing these things cost anywhere near $500 to build. For example, the ipod touch starts at $200, which is obviously sold for a profit. Meanwhile, the iphone (a pretty damn similar device), is $500. Its not like you get a reduced monthly price if you bring your own phone.
Verizon doesn't use SIM cards - it's CDMA like Sprint.
Sprint is not the largest cellular network. Sprint is either third or fourth largest in the US in terms of customers and covers both less people and less geographic area than AT&T or Verizon. Plus, Sprint isn't technically a cellular carrier. To split hairs, cellular service is at 800MHz while PCS service is at 1900MHz (which is what Sprint uses for their CDMA network - their iDEN network being a SMR network). Normally, I wouldn't nitpick like that, but Sprint made a big deal about being all-PCS a while back calling themselves "the clear alternative to cellular".
HTC has had good relations with Sprint so I'm guessing that a Sprint version might come, but it won't come quickly. Sprint is losing customers at a high rate. There's no incentive for a phone manufacturer to want to put effort into debuting on Sprint given that the line of phones (Pre, Hero, Moment - which were all great phones) Sprint has gotten haven't done so well.
T-Mobile is easy to start out with because they don't require lots of customization and GSM phones can be re-used all over the world. Verizon customers are clamoring for an iPhone competitor (as evidenced by Droid sales). AT&T has the iPhone. Sprint just isn't winning customers. So, it's to be expected that Sprint's going to be at the bottom of the heap after lackluster results for quite a while.
Oh, and it's worth pointing out (as AT&T insists in their commercials against Verizon) that 2G should be good enough for anybody, and the Nexus One will work on AT&T's 2G network that they think is so awesome.
I have over 1.3 Gigs of apps on my iPhone. It's not hard to use up that much space on an iPhone for apps. There are tons of apps out there that are well over 100mb.
Sure you may not play games, but then what about 3rd party mapping software which preloads all the maps to the phone.
Having only 190Mb for apps is a huge deal breaker for me.
In Soviet Russia, the television watches YOU!
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.
according to the nexus one specs, the UMTS Band (2100/AWS/900) will not support ATT network 3G but does work on T-Mobiles 3G network. T-Mobile 3G and voice coverage is one of worst in US.
as far as i know, no smartphone covers both AT&T and T-Mo's 3g network. no existing android phone does, and the iphone doesn't. blackberry sells two different hardware versions of it's phone models, one to cover each band.
it's not some insidious plan, it's the economics of supporting two different 3g networks.
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.
In Soviet Russia, the television watches YOU!
Banning bundling would be harsh for users who "can't afford" to pay full price up front, and would rather spread the real cost of the phone across the length of the contract. This scheme greatly increases sales in markets where consumers are focused on short-term benefits (at the cost of long-term payment/debt).
Making an unbundled option mandatory would be a better goal. Good luck getting either option legislated, though.
Google wants a plethora of devices, the Google phone seems to be the first attempt to try and create an unlocked phone marketplace, which will help their cause. This new phone is a small attempt to start doing that. Maybe so the wireless carriers cannot easily block Google's advertising.
More evidence that this is about advertising is Apple's purchase of mobile advertising company Quattro Wireless.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
See here for lengthy back-and-forth with two guys who've had the phone in their hands since late last month.
If you read the whole thing, they've got benchmarks and such. It's really long though.
Oh, and it's worth pointing out (as AT&T insists in their commercials against Verizon) that 2G should be good enough for anybody, and the Nexus One will work on AT&T's 2G network that they think is so awesome.
Not good enough for anybody, just good enough for those used to other provider's "3G" speeds, which aren't much better than AT&T's 2G speeds. If you're already used to AT&T's 3G speeds, this will be a noticeable step down.
E pluribus unum
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.
Will it blend?
I noticed on the tech specs page that Nexus One supports Ogg Vorbis audio. Do other Android phones support Ogg Vorbis playback? I mean, it would seem like that would be a feature of the base Android platform, but IIRC, when the G1 launched, Ogg support wasn't included? I know - it's been over a year since the G1 launched, and a lot has changed in newer versions of Android. Still, have any of the other *currently released* Android phones come with Ogg decoder?
My understanding is that it's a security measure.
What exactly they're trying to protect against or even if it actually helps, I do not know.
The SD card is FAT-formatted because the phone presents it over USB as a block device, so that PCs and Macs can pretend it's a camera or other media device. But the use of FAT means that the card lacks Unix file permissions, in particular the owner/group info that stops one app from stomping on another app's data. (The device is mounted noexec, to prevent temptation/abuse.) I've seen talk of using Linux's encrypted loopback abilities at some future point, but it's been on the wishlist since the G1 came out so I wouldn't hold my breath.
Range Voting: preference intensity matters
Yes, Android currently only lets you install application packages on internal memory. Application developers know this, so there's a major effort made to keep the application footprint small, and then have the applications download and store additional resources on the SD card, which has no such limitations. As an example, a game would store its levels/media on the SD card. Or in the case of an offline GPS app, the map data would be stored on the SD card.
With my Droid, I've yet to get anywhere close to this limitation, and I'm always on the hunt for neat apps on the market. I currently have 162MB free (I believe it originally had 250MB available).
Yes, it's not inconceivable that you'll run into this limitation, but at the same time, it doesn't come up all that often. Don't be concerned that your iPhone is using 3GB for app storage...on an Android device those apps would be putting 95% of their data on the SD card.
If you care about opensource, then you should be getting a Nokia N900, not Google's half proprietary system.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.