
Google Nexus One docs get leaked: $530 unsubsidized, $180 with plan - transburgh
http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2009/12/29/google-nexus-one-docs-get-leaked-530-unsubsidized-180-with-plan/
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ars
Looks like kw_ has to pay up on his bet with michaelkeenan
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=997078>

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jrockway
Before anyone makes any donations, someone should probably wait for this
information to be confirmed by Google or T-Mobile. You know, the people
actually selling the product, not some random blog...

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ugh
Short: Just another phone.

~~~
pmcginn
Yeah, if these docs are true, I'm sticking with Verizon and my BlackBerry; not
that I have any special love for either one of them. $80/mo? That's what I pay
Verizon. $180 for a subsidized, non-Apple smartphone? Keep your ten percent.

There goes my post-christmas geek present to myself. Without the massive cost
savings that had been rumored, I have zero incentive to pay out of my Verizon
contract.

~~~
pyre
> _$180 for a subsidized, non-Apple smartphone?_

If the 'non-Apple' part is an issue then why aren't you buying an iPhone?

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jsz0
Google is missing an opportunity here. This device, sold at or near cost,
could have been an iPod Touch competitor. That would have been a huge boost to
the Android Market. It seems the iPod Touch is outselling the iPhone these
days by a pretty good clip -- at least according to holiday App Store
downloads:

[http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/12/28/flurry-app-store-
sees...](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/12/28/flurry-app-store-sees-record-
breaking-christmas-50-growth-from-november-to-december/)

~~~
iigs
Google undercutting their hardware partners would be suicide for future phone
wins. Moreover, since Google doesn't do their own hardware, this would surely
be the last time HTC partnered with them and they'd be up a creek for future
hardware designs.

Google only cares about things with a data connection, and I firmly believe
that WiFi only devices are a small enough market that they're just a
distraction for the big names right now -- except Apple, since the iPod touch
kind of bridged an established product with the at-the-time new phone
platform.

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swolchok
Why are phones so bloody expensive? The iPod Touch can be had for $200ish, so
why does adding the "phone part" double the cost? (full disclosure: I'm on the
iPod Touch curmudgeon phone plan -- I pay Skype $3/mo for outgoing calls and
insist that incoming callers leave voicemail, which is emailed to me through
Google Voice.)

~~~
nostrademons
My phone's got more processing power and more memory than the laptop I bought
5 years ago. It also has a GPS, camera, accelerometer, voice recognition, and
cellular connection. And it fits in my pocket.

The laptop cost $1600 when I bought it. Why are we complaining about a $500ish
phone?

~~~
swolchok
Because some handwavy analogue to Moore's Law says that said laptop ought to
cost about $400 now (and in fact it's hard to justify blowing $1k on a
laptop). Have you priced something equivalent (compute-wise, screens are still
expensive) lately?

~~~
nostrademons
Given a choice between a $400 laptop and a $500 phone, I think the phone is
significantly more useful. You can't shove a laptop into a pocket. You
generally can't talk to a laptop and have it understand what you're saying.
It's rather inconvenient to take pictures with your laptop. Your laptop
doesn't have a GPS, and even if it did you can't fit it on the dashboard of
your car. You get cellular service in many more areas than you can find open
wireless networks.

If I could code conveniently on my phone, I wouldn't use my laptop for
_anything_. I've switched over to my phone as my primary web browser, e-mail
client, music player, thumb drive, GPS, atlas, address book, camera, and game
machine.

~~~
jrockway
Laptops can be purchased with integrated 3G/WiMax now. Laptops can run the
exact same software as phones, too. (Fire up Android in VirtualBox.)

I find phones nice for their niche (almost-computer when you aren't near a
computer), but if I was sitting next to a laptop and a phone, I would only use
the phone for phone calls.

~~~
nostrademons
The point of the phone is that you're likely to be sitting next to the phone
far more often than you're likely to be sitting next to the laptop.

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cwan
Not in the US so I don't really know how the plans are like but this seems
expensive: "- If you want it subsidized, you’ll have to sign up for a 2 year
mandatory contract \- There’s only one rate plan: $39.99 Even More + Text +
Web for $79.99 total". It would seem that if you want the phone that badly it
would be cheaper just to cough up the $530.

Incidentally, given that we sort of know what the pricing is (I suppose they
could be aggressive about dropping the price later), what's the strategy here
for Google? Just worried about cannibalizing sales of other firms that use
Android? Why even bother putting out their own phone or being so involved with
Motorola in the development of the iDroid?

~~~
Andys
Exactly what I did to get my G1 here in Australia. Bought it outright for
around $600 and then went on a $5/month plan with calls and data that are
cheap enough ($15/GB).

As far as I can see, buying outright always works out cheaper than a hefty
plan with all the trimmings included

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zenlinux
Drat. If the earlier rumors I had heard were true (unlocked phone for $199), I
was thinking they were committing to a smart strategy to decimate Nokia and
their N900 phone. Guess that's not the case.

~~~
houseabsolute
It would be nice if you spent some time explaining why you believe selling at
$199 would be "smart". Google already gives too many things away for free.
Selling a phone that might be able to compete with the iPhone at $199 almost
certainly means selling at a loss. To what end? I can't imagine that search
queries can make up for the remaining $100 or $200 that it costs to
manufacture the phone. Unless you believe "decimating Nokia" is an end itself,
I'm curious why you think it would be a smart move.

~~~
pmcginn
The $199 was never the attraction for me, and seemed unlikely. $300? Ehh...
Maybe. I always figured it'd land in the $500 range, and this isn't too far
off.

The real carrot for me was the idea of a prepaid $29/mo data only plan, which
I actually thought was believable. T-Mobile already offers pretty much the
exact same plan ($1/day) for prepaid Sidekick users (voice is 0.15/min.) I
barely use voice (~100 minutes/mo), and if I could drop my unlimited
text/internet/450 voice plan for something that was only $29, I could
definitely learn to live with the quirks of VOIP on a mobile handset and the
loss of MMS.

Honestly, even if you threw me in a contract to get the phone at $199, as long
as data was that cheap I'd gladly sign up for two years the same minute I was
sending Verizon their $350 good-bye letter.

I don't use my phone as a phone and am sick of having to pay so much for
minutes I just don't use. The cost of my voice plan before data and text is
around $40/mo, which works out to me paying .40/minute for what I use. Even if
I used real voice instead of Google Voice I'd be saving money.

~~~
wmf
T-Mobile will give you a cheap plan for the Sidekick because it's not powerful
enough to use much bandwidth. A Nexus One is likely to use a lot more.

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awa
Sigh.. I was all excited about it and was thinking of dumping my iPhone, since
it seemed I would atleast save some money in the long run. Unfortunately, it
would cost me the same and T-mobile service isn't much better than AT&T (imho)

The only interesting conclusion from the article seems to be that Google is
confident that Nexus One would be able to compete one on one with the iPhone
on features and usability, hence they offered no major discounts to get the
customers.

~~~
jrockway
T-Mobile is significantly cheaper than AT&T, however. With the lowest number
of minutes and unlimited data, I was paying $110 on AT&T (including taxes). On
T-Mobile, this is about $70 with taxes. That is almost $500/year cheaper!

~~~
awa
how? Afaik $40 is the minimum voice plan add $30 for iphone plan. Total $70...
Add about 10% in taxes and say another 10% in fees. Total=$85.

However, you can easily get a 15% discount by having .edu email address or
most companies get the same discount which usually offset the various fees and
taxes.

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shalmanese
Hrmm... unless T-mobile has a different ETF for the nexus one, it would seem
smarter to buy it subsidized and eat the $200 ETF.

It's a compelling value proposition as a VOIP/Google Voice phone.

T-Mobile has an unlimited data plan for $40, add in unlimited text messaging
for $10. The TCO for a 24 month nexus one on this is $1580. As opposed to the
$2360 for an iPhone. That $800 difference could be the tipping point for a lot
of people.

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derwiki
This is all wishful thinking.. but if anyone at Google is listening, how about
discounts for us G1 users? We knew the G1 wasn't as good as an iPhone, but we
bought it anyway, because we wanted to do our part in helping the Android OS
succeed. Now it's one year later, Droids have come out, and I still get a
"kill task" dialog every time I start a browser on the G1 (because it's slow).

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dannyr
I'm going to hold off making judgement until Google's announcement on January
5.

I think they have something up in their sleeves. My guess is its mostly
software-related though - new Android features or cloud/mobile services.

~~~
jrockway
What cloud features does Google not provide? Add a contact in Google Voice,
watch it show up on your phone. Change the color of a calendar on Google
Calendar, watch the color change on the calendar widget. Etc., etc.

~~~
dannyr
Full backup of your data and files (e.g. photos, music, videos).

Easy access to your Google Docs. I believe there are apps on the market that
does this but Google might integrate in the core of Android.

Native Google Task App.

------
ars
If I buy the unlocked phone can I use it with AT&t (or any other GSM carrier)?

~~~
bretpiatt
It looks like though if you want to use it on AT&T you'll be on EDGE until it
is jailbroken. It has the proper frequency 3G chip in it but in the early
testing it only connects to the 2.5G EDGE network so something with the AT&T
3G is disabled on it.

I'll be swapping from my BlackBerry Bold as soon as this gets fixed. Maybe I'm
crazy for not wanting an iPhone since I'm already on AT&T and want to stay
with them as a carrier but this looks like the first device I'm willing to
switch to instead of a BlackBerry after making the swap a few years back from
an Nokia N61.

------
RK
I currently have $6/month 3G internet from T-mobile (continued service from a
couple years ago), so I will definitely be buying this at $530.

------
grandalf
I was excited about the rumored $99 pricing. This is a huge disappointment.

~~~
timdorr
You were disappointed by a lie?

~~~
grandalf
All of the other rumors about google products/services have turned out to be
true, so I felt a bit more inclined to believe this one than I typically
would.

Also, I would really respect Google for using some of its billions of dollars
to subsidize the phone to the $99 price point and take tons of market share
(thus creating a huge incentive for app developers).

Sadly Google seems content to release just another phone.

~~~
plinkplonk
"using some of its billions of dollars to subsidize the phone to the $99 price
point"

easy to suggest when it is not _your_ billions of dollars being thrown away
;-)

"This device, sold at or near cost, " (as jsz0 suggests) is a more reasonable
strategy, since (a) Google's main revenue streams are not affected (probably
enhanced) and (b) Apple and Nokia can't compete without reducing their profit.

That said, I think Google is a sufficiently big company now to have mediocre
middle managers who'd scuttle such "radical" ideas.

~~~
grandalf
True, those are accurate points. I was just hoping for a really bold move.
This does not seem to be all that bold (unless the $199 pricing is for people
w/o "old" google accounts which might still leave room for the rumor to be
true).

