

The Google Phone Is Very Real. And It’s Coming Soon - snewe
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/17/thegoogle-phone/

======
yumraj
One possibility is that Google is thinking really outside the box.

They have Google Voice and have recently purchased Gizmo5. In addition they
have been really working towards providing free Wifi access in various
hotspots and have been fighting for wireless spectrum.

It may be wishful thinking, especially since I'm not a wireless phone
technology expert, but can Google be setting the stage for a pure VOIP Wifi
phone which completely bypasses Telcos and can this Google phone be just that?

~~~
wmeredith
In my dreams, yes, but you're going to have serious problems with that
implementation. Think about your cell phone in your car on a plane, etc.

~~~
gaius
In the UK 3* already have a dedicated Skype-over-Wifi handset, I believe it
wasn't terribly successful.

*3 is the name of a mobile telco in the UK.

------
jonknee
It will be interesting to see how this turns out. On one hand we have Mike
Arrington who is wrong quite a bit. On the other we have the VP of Android
Engineering directly stating that Google isn't making a device and won't
compete with their customers. If I were a betting man I'd say Mike's going to
eat it.

<http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10387677-265.html>

~~~
mbrubeck
My personal guess is that Arrington's source heard about a real project, but
it's actually just another Android Developer Phone, not a consumer product.

------
eli
As I said last time these rumors came up, I _really_ don't think this story is
accurate.

Nobody in the US wants to buy a $500+ phone at retail when they can buy a $150
Droid or a $50 G1 with a new plan. After all, you're going to have to pay the
same monthly fee either way.

Not to mention the fact that it's basically impossible to have one phone that
will get 3G on all US carriers (even supporting just two at once would be
difficult and expensive). If it only works on one carrier, how is it any
different from the Droid?

~~~
there
_Nobody in the US wants to buy a $500+ phone at retail when they can buy a
$150 Droid or a $50 G1 with a new plan. After all, you're going to have to pay
the same monthly fee either way._

t-mobile would disagree with you. they just announced new plans a few weeks
ago that are contract-free, cost less per month (since you are not paying for
the subsidized cost of a phone), and allow you to bring your own phone or buy
theirs for the total upfront cost.

i am using an iphone on t-mobile and just switched to one of these plans. i
got locked into a 1-year contact by buying the mytouch 3g when it came out,
but once the contract is up, i'll be contract-free and paying less per month
than i would on their normal plan.

~~~
eli
What do you gain by paying more upfront for a phone that you can't really take
anywhere else anyway? Sure, your iPhone will work on T-Mobile... but not with
3G.

~~~
there
you are paying the same amount for the phone regardless. you're either paying
for it all upfront or spreading it out by paying an extra $10 every month for
the duration of the contract.

with the new plans, you can buy their phone upfront and then sell it on
ebay/craigslist and move to another provider without worrying about breaking a
contract, or you can just bring your own phone.

------
nearestneighbor
My unscientific prediction: Andoid has only a few months to catch up to iPhone
by June 2010, when the exclusivity deal with AT&T ends. This is not nearly
enough.

~~~
davidw
_A_ T and T is not really a concern in most of the world, so at best that
concerns the US market, which has been, until the iPhone, a bit of a backwater
in terms of mobile phone stuff.

I see Apple conquering a nice share of the market, maybe even larger than
anyone else, but still well under 50%. If everyone has one, they lose their
cachet. Also, Android will probably never be quite as beautiful, but if you
combine 'good enough' with a far more open system, and a platform that people
can innovate on, I think that, long term, it will do quite well.

I sure hope so; I'm simply not interested in owning devices that I can't load
my own code on, and that also require the ownership of a Mac just to develop
on.

~~~
nearestneighbor
_I'm simply not interested in owning devices that I can't load my own code on_

The average consumer doesn't care about this.

~~~
davidw
Good for them, I was talking about myself in that phrase, which is why I
prefaced it with "I sure hope so".

I do think that open tends to win out over closed, though, with time, because
the advantages for developers and businesses translate into advantages for
everyone.

~~~
tjogin
I agree that advantages for developers and businesses are key to success in
the long term, for any platform.

But I don't agree that openness of the platform is _necessarily_ the exclusive
nor primary way of doing that — it's just _a_ way of doing that.

Right now, Apple's platform is clearly offering key advantages to developers
and businesses, in spite of not offering a very open platform.

Personally, I hope both Google, RIM and Palm manage to catch up in this
department. Strong competition between these vendors should offer plenty of
incentives for them to improve their own platforms.

Apple certainly seem to need a bit of extra motivation to improve the train-
wreck that is the AppStore approval process — right now I think their success
is blinding their ability to see many of their flaws.

~~~
davidw
> Right now, Apple's platform is clearly offering key advantages to developers
> and businesses, in spite of not offering a very open platform.

It absolutely blew the competition out of the water, so yeah, that's what the
'key advantages' are. Everyone had been muddling along with their fiddly Nokia
interfaces, which aren't _bad_ , but nowhere near as nice or cool as the
iPhone.

However, Android looks to be 'good enough' in terms of competition, much like
Windows was 'good enough' when competing with the Mac, and much more open in
terms of what it ran on. The big open question for me about Android is
fragmentation. With j2me staring them in the face, it's something they _have_
to be thinking about a great deal, and I'd really love to know what they
actually think about it.

In any case, between a closed, proprietary platform and an open source one, I
know where my own loyalties lie. There is tons of work in this field, and I
will simply not bother with mobile if it ends up being 'owned' by Apple.

~~~
tjogin
I'm not talking about the interface of the device, I'm talking about the
_complete picture_ of developing mobile apps — Apple's offering, while flawed,
is a huge step up from the state of mobile development prior to the iPhone.

~~~
davidw
I think that:

* The app store is a good idea and a win for developers.

* The tools/environment suck. I don't use a Mac and I do not want to. Java ME lets me use Linux, Mac or Windows. Same with Android.

* The hoop jumping sucks. Reading about all the hoops just to get something on your own phone makes it look unpleasant.

* The single platform does make things easier, but that has some costs for consumers who don't get as much freedom as with, say, Nokia (who have way too _many_ offerings, but that's another post, another time).

So, they've had a few good ideas, but on the whole I don't think it's
revolutionary. I think the hardware/software themselves are what was really
the great leap forward.

~~~
tjogin
If their offering to mobile app developers _isn't_ revolutionary, why _is_ the
number and quality of apps revolutionary?

------
fh
> There won’t be any negotiation or compromise over the phone’s design of
> features – Google is dictating every last piece of it. No splintering of the
> Android OS that makes some applications unusable. Like the iPhone for Apple,
> this phone will be Google’s pure vision of what a phone should be.

Excuse me, but how exactly will releasing _another_ Android phone _reduce_
splintering of the platform? That doesn't make sense at all.

~~~
jsz0
It could become the defacto standard for Android devices. Mostly screen
resolution & a baseline CPU/memory expectation for developers to target. This
could reduce splintering by simply making Android a far less attractive option
for use outside of the ARM mobile phone platform. Ultimately I think this is
Google's goal. They want to keep Android a mobile phone OS and position Chrome
OS for netbooks, tablets, etc.

------
kgrin
How will it work on a carrier's 3G network? My understanding was that even
most tri-band GSM phones have a custom chip from the carrier in order to work
on their particular 3G network. Is that incorrect? If not, how will a phone
_not_ tied to a carrier work on, say, T-mobile 3G?

~~~
robk
There are two things to consider 1) SIM lock that ties a phone to a particular
carrier. A Google phone wouldn't have a SIM lock unless it were subsidized by
a particular carrier. 2) GSM bands. The phone could be quad-band GSM and work
on any 3G network. Some recent GSM handsets omit one of the four bands to
prevent roaming inside the US between T-Mob and AT&T.

------
joshwa
GSM or CDMA?

~~~
davidw
I really hope it's GSM... I'm starting to weigh my options in terms of
unlocked Android device to develop with.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
If you buy a phone from T-Mobile (GSM), they will gladly unlock the device for
you if you tell them that you will be traveling with the phone to Europe.
Alternatively, you can purchase either the ADP1 or ADP2 phones directly from
Google already unlocked.

