
Google pulls plug on Nexus One - jasongullickson
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/google-pulls-plug-on-nexus-one/8947
======
anigbrowl
I feel it's worth pointing out that they haven't killed the phone, just their
retail channel. Theoretically the thing could finally become available in
carrier stores now, although they probably won't bother after Google's rather
poor handling of the marketing and publicity.

Sad to see them giving up on challenging the carriers, but with no retail
'Google stores' where people could examine the thing before paying ~$500 for
it that's not very surprising. I still like mine, even though I might have
saved a few $ by buying a Droid or something.

~~~
artsrc
One of the carriers here is selling them.

[http://store.vodafone.com.au/handset-htc-nexus-
one.aspx?pid=...](http://store.vodafone.com.au/handset-htc-nexus-
one.aspx?pid=vcap:home:hero:nexus-one)

~~~
mambodog
But apparently they only have 1000 of them, and won't get any more, due to the
Nexus One being End-of-life.

[http://ausdroid.net/2010/07/02/vodafone-only-
have-1000-nexus...](http://ausdroid.net/2010/07/02/vodafone-only-
have-1000-nexus-ones/)

I was going to pick one up for cross platform game development with Unity3D,
but this was before I found out that developers in Australia still can't sell
apps on the Android Marketplace. I thought Google would have their shit
together with this by now.

------
kloncks
The best comment I've heard on this news came from John Gruber:

"Here’s the list of Android phones you can buy today other than the Nexus One
which support Android version 2.2: {}."

~~~
jrockway
I can make meaningless statements too! "Here's the list of iPhone apps I can
install on my iPhone without Apple's permission: {}"

Incidentally, 2.2 (via the CM6 test) runs just fine on my Sapphire. The joy of
Free Software is that I can fix my own device that is no longer the flavor of
the month. T-Mobile will never give that device an Android > 2.0. But the
community can, and it works much better than the stock image.

(Android 2.2 _sort of_ works on my EVO 4G. The 4G doesn't work, but then
again, since the EVO came out, Sprint's 4G hasn't worked in Chicago anyway. So
I guess 2.2 works fine on the EVO, actually.)

Anyway, it all comes down to how you define supported. If you mean, "in the
form of a bloatware ROM filled with ads for your carrier", you're right,
Android 2.2 is not supported by anything. If you mean, "I can check it out
from git, compile it, and load it onto my phone", well, pretty much everything
supports 2.2 now. Pretty awesome, if you ask me.

~~~
lr
That is great for you, but for 99% of the rest of the planet that doesn't give
a flying f __* about open source or couldn't care less about hacking a phone,
the fragmentation of the Android market is only going to piss them off when
they eventually encounter the day where their friends can do some cool thing
on their Android phones, and they can't. With the iPhone the path of
progression from one phone to another is simple and clear. Not the case with
Android.

~~~
krschultz
Uh, there are obvious differences between different versions of the iPhone
and/or iPod Touch that lead to new version envy. Otherwise why would anyone
upgrade?

~~~
kyleslattery
The thing is though--if you go into a store and by an iPhone, you're
guaranteed to have the newest version. If you go and buy an Android phone, you
never quite know what you're getting.

~~~
bretthoerner
They still sell the 3G.

And that's kind of a tautology. You're tied to one manufacturer and one
carrier. I can walk into the Verizon store and purchase the most expensive HTC
phone and I know that I have the latest HTC on Verizon just like you know you
have the latest Apple device on AT&T. A lack of choice doesn't mean you
automatically have something better in your hands.

~~~
kyleslattery
Sorry, I should have been clearer: you can't buy an iPhone that isn't running
iOS 4. Yes, it may be older hardware, but you're guaranteed to have the newest
version of the software.

~~~
kissickas
Which, ironically, completely crashes my iPhone 3. Thankfully, downgrading is
still an option.

------
eli
I blame Google for letting people build the Nexus One up so much (remember the
crazy pre-launch rumors about how it was going to change the world?)

It's not that Americans are stupid and the rest of the world is smart. The
problem is that you typically pay the same monthly service fee whether you
take a subsidized phone or not. To go buy your own phone at full retail price
is leaving hundreds of dollars on the table. (T-Mobile is the notable
exception as they let you pay slightly less for a contractless plan.)

Also, few people are willing to buy an expensive phone that they can't even
hold in their hand first. My understand was that Google was going to try to
get the phones some retail space in e.g. Best Buy.

~~~
technomancy
> The problem is that you typically pay the same monthly service fee whether
> you take a subsidized phone or not.

Yeah, T-mobile is really great about this. I'm saving over a thousand dollars
over the life of the phone by getting a data-only plan.

~~~
rwl
I'm curious: do you have a data-only plan so you can use VoIP to make phone
calls?

I have been trying to find a device that would make it easy to make VoIP calls
most of the time, since I am nearly always around free (or already-paid for)
wireless broadband, but fall back on a prepaid SIM card when I only have cell
network coverage. Some of the Android devices look promising for this,
especially the Nexus One, but I have been unable to find hard information
about whether it's possible to do this conveniently.

~~~
stanleydrew
I use VoIP for almost all calls on my N1, but any Android phone will allow you
to do it pretty conveniently. For instance, I have two friends who are doing
the same with their G1 and Moto Droid respectively. We use the sipdroid
application with gizmo5.

~~~
sounddust
Do you not have any problems with dropped calls due to data being the lowest
priority when the cell tower is processing heavy traffic? I have had this
problem with data in general (when I go to a concert, for example, it's almost
impossible to use data reliably, moderately difficult to use voice, and SMS
works perfectly).

~~~
stanleydrew
Indeed that is sometimes a problem, but I don't make a ton of voice calls in
super-high volume areas.

------
cookiecaper
Personally I don't think that Google tried very hard. I hardly ever watch TV,
but I've seen TV commercials for Droid. I didn't see any for Nexus One.

I upgraded from a dumb phone recently and wanted to buy a Nexus One, but
T-Mobile lady told me Google required a much more expensive plan, that the
buy-one-get-one free sale wasn't applicable, and that there were all other
kinds of undesirable things about it. It also cost a lot of money for the
device itself, and I don't have a lot of money.

So while I would have really liked to buy a N1, I bought a G1 for $99, got
another G1 for my wife for free, and took them home, rooted, and installed
Android 2.1 and I'm perfectly happy with it. We're on a plan that is about $30
less than our separate dumb phones and includes unlimited data and text. And
none of this would have been possible with a Nexus One.

I don't see any reason why this would be part of Google's fundamental
strategy. I don't have a problem with Google selling phones online or directly
or being the exclusive dealer, but the Nexus One was just too much hassle and
would have cost much, much more in the long term.

~~~
demo-
You should check out cyanogenmod-6.0.0RC1. It's Android 2.2 for G1. I've got
it running and my G1 is flying faster than ever.

~~~
albemuth
Any downsides? Does everything work? What about battery life? Might flash my
dev phone 1

~~~
orangecat
CM6 has been 100% solid for my Nexus One. I'm getting noticeably better
battery life compared to stock 2.1, probably from the JIT compiler needing
fewer cycles to do the same operations.

------
shalinmangar
I don't think it was Google's intention to sell a lot of Nexus One units. I
believe that they wanted to set a standard for Android phones over which other
manufacturers could improve. Android phones before Nexus One were not good
enough and they wanted to tell people that this is how an Android phone should
be.

~~~
btilly
This.

Google never wanted to try to cut out the middle-men. Google didn't want to
push the phone too much. They just wanted to put it out there to be able to
let them know, "Here, look, this is what you can do with this technology at
this price point."

As was pointed out at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1529657>, Google
achieved its aims. The Nexus One was a success. It can go away now.

If you pay attention, you'll often see companies do strange and counter-
intuitive things because their goal isn't simply to make money on every single
product. Study and learn, because they often aren't being nearly as stupid as
you might think.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
It's the same strategy as Chrome. They could just have made another browser
and pushed it via tie-ins, lock-ins and millions of dollars in advertising.
Instead they rebuilt the browser from the ground up for speed and security.
This prompted everyone else in the browser space to up their game too.

Google is betting that they benefit more from a lot of competitive browsers,
than from having an iron grip on a single browser. Conversely, they can't
allow someone else with an iron grip to hold the browser market back to
benefit themselves. The same is true of the phone market.

~~~
btilly
Well Chrome is a somewhat different strategy. Sure, Chrome tried to raise the
bar. But Google has a lot of other uses for that browser technology. It is
used internally, it shows up in Android, the JavaScript engine is usable in a
stand-alone environment, it will be used in ChromeOS, etc. Google didn't just
release it, say, "We've made our point" and then stop.

Google's strategy with the Nexus One strategy is an occasional strategy. If
you're not planning to go into a line of business, it is a lot of money to
spend for uncertain reward. That said, I'm quite sure that Google would not be
adverse to using it again if they found a good reason to do so.

------
s3graham
I've said this before, but this is so disappointing. Canada's cell phone
market is so horribly warped and the N1 was one of the few attempts to push
things slightly towards sane.

------
lwhi
"Google’s plan to cut out the middle-man from the sales plan (that is, the
mobile operators) sucks (unless you’re talking about Apple)."

Maybe it's fair to say that the problems involved in selling direct to the
consumer are relatively insurmountable, unless your company has expertise in
that domain.

I think Google must have underestimated the task.

~~~
frossie
_I think Google must have underestimated the task._

Or overestimated their own interest in playing this game.

~~~
drewcrawford
If they're going to compete with Apple though, who's now firmly waltzing into
Google's territory (see iAd and all the new cloud services)...

...don't they _have_ to be interested in playing this game?

~~~
etherael
No, they just need to partner with people who are interested in playing this
game.

------
ern
The headlines seem to be a bit exaggerated. Given that they just launched in
South Korea and Australia, and seem to be following up on an existing
announcement, I can't see how stopping sales to consumers in the US
constitutes "pulling the plug" (although the ambiguous tone of the Nexus One
blog post is the main culprit here).

------
YooLi
With the Nexus one going away, is there any other Android phone that doesn't
need to be rooted to install vanilla android and updates?

~~~
yason
This is exactly why I was waiting for Nexus One, well, to be sold in Finland.
I don't want any "value-adding crap" in my phone, much like I don't want any
OEM crap in my computer either.

A plain Ubuntu or plain Android installation is what I want. Are there really
no other Android phones that come without? _Oh crap._

(FYI U.S. citizens: most mobile phones in Finland and Europe are sold
separately from the carrier plan, thus making it easy for people to buy
directly from Google. If only they had decided to sell...)

~~~
lenni
It is indeed a massive shame. After having been fucked around by tmobile
Germany I promised myself to never buy a phone from a carrier again. Looks
like it is going to be an iPhone now. Say what you want about Apple, they
won't let anyone mess about with their software.

------
Tichy
You can still buy the N1, just not from Google.

I think they gave up too soon.

~~~
tptacek
I don't think they "gave up" so much as "saw they were never going to make a
lot of money on it" and "were antagonizing the channel for the vast majority
of all Android sales". G doesn't want to sell phones; they just want to
control the OS that runs on them.

~~~
tjogin
Do you think that it would have been _disappointing_ to Google if Nexus One
had sold like hotcakes?

~~~
zmmmmm
Actually I think they might have seen it as a problem. I genuinely believe
they wanted to target the N1 at only developers and sophisticated users who
generally self-serve as far as support goes. They wanted to seed the
evangelist and developer communities with a top notch, completely open phone
so that they would then develop for and recommend Android to their followers.

Had grandma and joe sixpack started using it they might never have been able
to handle the support issues. I think they identified a set of users who gave
them high "bang for their buck" and specifically targeted them. I know many
people say they never saw an ad for the N1 and yet I saw them for a solid 2
months straight on every page that had Google ads on them.

~~~
tjogin
So if everything went according to plan, why are they canceling it?

------
macrael
Is there any evidence that there will be a Nexus Two? Is it safe to infer that
part of the reason for the end of the Nexus strategy is due to carriers and
hardware makers objecting to there being a "google blessed" phone?

~~~
adbge
According to Eric Schmidt (Google's CEO), there will be no Nexus Two.

“The idea a year and a half ago was to do the Nexus One to try to move the
phone platform hardware business forward. It clearly did. It was so
successful, we didn't have to do a second one. We would view that as positive
but people criticised us heavily for that. I called up the board and said:
'Ok, it worked. Congratulations - we're stopping'."

Source:
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7864223/Googles...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7864223/Googles-
Eric-Schmidt-You-can-trust-us-with-your-data.html)

------
seanalltogether
I bought the nexus one specifically because it was on par with the iphone but
allowed me to throw any sim card in that I wanted for traveling between
countries. Are there any other phone on the market similar to this?

~~~
pietrofmaggi
An unlocked iPhone.

But it cost more than the N1. Here in Italy Vodafone sell (if you can find it)
the N1 without contract for 499€, while the iPhone 3GS is now 539€.

------
sprout
> Google’s plan to cut out the middle-man from the sales plan (that is, the
> mobile operators) sucks (unless you’re talking about Apple).

Except Apple hasn't cut out the middle-man. In fact, the notion that carriers
are middle-men is silly. If anything, Apple is the middle-man getting
consumers locked into AT&T's poorly priced and overpriced data plans. The
hardware is incidental, which is why Google 'failed.' The carriers refuse to
offer data service, only phones with bundled service.

------
grandalf
Looking forward to Google buying t-Mobile and calling it g-mobile.

~~~
zyb09
I know this is a joke, but I don't think they could afford it. T-Mobile is
just a small division of a very big company.

~~~
protomyth
But there have been persistent rumors that the US T-Mobile operation has been
up for sale.

------
dannyr
I give props for Google for trying. I don't really care that they failed. They
didn't really know if selling an unlocked phone would work unless they try it.

------
hwang89
After lusting after the phone for a while, I ordered an unlocked N1 last night
after hearing the news. Did I rush it?

~~~
jwhitlark
Nah. It's just not being sold direct anymore. It's still being sold.

And it's a great phone, esp. with 2.2 on it.

------
martingordon
The lack of retail stores wouldn't have been such a big deal if Google offered
a similar, if not better, return policy than phones you could hold in your
hand before buying.

A 14 day/$45 restocking fee policy is pretty bad. When it's for a $500 device
you can't play with anywhere before purchasing, it's abysmal.

~~~
protomyth
Having retail stores (or at least a space in retail stores staffed by your
company) has really helped Apple sell a lot of product. There is no real
substitute for being able to play with a device and see how good it really is.
I think Google didn't get those type of buyers and Googles trouble with people
calling them to resolve issues didn't help.

------
paul9290
This was a great PR stunt that further ignited Android as premium SmartPhone
OS/experience and alternative to the iPhone.

I own an iPhone and prefer it due to hardware/software experience, but the
Droid is pretty cool and the Droid X has some killer features.

------
augustl
I bought a Nexus One a few days ago. I suspect many would feel sorry for me,
but don't worry, I'm just fine.

Google will continue to improve the OS, and I'm sure the device will get
better and better in the years to come.

~~~
orangecat
_Google will continue to improve the OS_

And if for some reason they don't, Cyanogen and others will. I expect an N1
will have a longer useful life than a Droid X.

------
joubert
What baffles me is that when I walk around New York, I don't see a single
Android, Nexus One, etc. ad.

But I do see iPad ads. I see iPhone ads. I see iPod ads. Often.

Since Google's business is advertising, I am amused.

~~~
zmmmmm
I saw enormous numbers of ads for the N1 - but only through the Google ad
network (on web sites). I think they were very selected and targeted in who
they were advertising to. I think they specifically did _not_ want hordes of
general consumers picking up this phone.

------
ashishbharthi
Any numbers on how many sold so far?

~~~
progr
They sold 135.000 devices in the first 74 days. Maybe now they are at
~200.000.

------
nlanier
I have said it before in this space and I'll say it again: I love the hell out
of my Nexus One, circumstances be damned.

------
AlexBlom
Not surprised. I love my Nexus One, but as soon as you have problems it is a
horrible experience. I realize this is HTC's fault, not Google's, but damn.

One month after sending it in for repair they lost the thing twice, sent it
back with the same issue and want me to go through it all again!

------
usaar333
How sad. The Nexus One was the best phone out there (at least for my
preferences). I was waiting for a Sprint N1 forever, but alas, that doesn't
seem to be happening.

------
duck
It makes sense that one had to give, but I for one didn't see this coming.

------
schammy
It's still going to be sold at retail outlets. Just because they're not
selling it directly anymore - so what? Can anyone tell me why this matters?

