Submitted by After months of anticipation T-Mobile and Google have unveiled the G1, the first commercially available handheld to run Google’s Linux-based Android mobile operating system. The smartphone, made by HTC, will be available on Oct. 22. The G1 will support 3G, EDGE and WiFi, includes a wide touchscreen besides of a slideout QWERTY keyboard, a 3-megapixel camera, a music player and applications like Google Maps with Street View. More applications are expected soon, developed by the community.
In response to Android’s entry into the market, the leading cell phone maker Nokia is planning on freeing and making its Symbian platform royalty-free too. Nokia’s David Rivas, head of technology management at Nokia’s S60 business sees little future for the practice of billing handset vendors for each phone sold with a particular operating system.
I really love the software ( although I was hoping for a new http://www.enkin.net/ like service from Google. )
But the hardware ..
-Touchscreen is low resolution like the iPhone ( VGA is a must for me )
-The keyboard seems not that usuable
-It just isn’t that sexy
Conclusion:
HTC give me a Android Touch HD with 800×480 and a soft touch touchscreen and I am sold.
Edited 2008-09-23 22:09 UTC
I figure at the moment it only has to be ‘as good’ as the iPhone hardware wise. It is only first generation. I think I’m going to wait until my current phone’s contract is up and hopefully by then the second generation ones will be out with higher resolution, better / different style etc.
I’ve only owned my RAZR2 V8 since February and with the mods, it’s pretty sweet. But it definitely would be nice to have full 3G, etc.
The iPhone is already been out for a year, so it’s not really a valid excuse for T-Mobile to be tripping over the same problems Apple had.
No 3.5m headjack?? Really? Seriously, what is the name of the person who OK’d that decision? They should be made into a piñata.
I find T-Mobile and other carriers to be bumbling idiots who can’t get their act together. I expect this new device to not even register as a blip on the radar compared to iPhone growth.
Being as good as the iPhone isn’t good enough. People will still buy the iPhone. It has to be *better*, and nobody as of yet seems to have the industrial [hardware|software] design to best the iPhone (other than perhaps Sony, and still, they bumble.)
I disagree – being significantly cheaper but not significantly worse would be enough for most. It should also worry Apple that Google have a significantly better set of services than them, iTunes Store aside, and the capability to build new things and integrate them straight into Android.
I think that is going to be a little difficult. This phone has basically the same hardware, plus a keyboard and slightly better camera.
In addition, Apple is already selling the iPhone in huge quantites, and so has the advantage of numbers on their side.
Plus they already have a thriving application + media store from which they get a large income as well.
I don’t think this phone is going to be much cheaper. If they wanted it to be much cheaper, they could have launched with a cheaper price and gotten a lot more publicity. Not going to be much publicity when the decrease the price a month after everybody’s board with it
You have to realize that some people don’t want to have anything to do with Apple and iPhone closed system. Me included. So an open platform phone with a market of apps not controlled by the iron fist of Apple (Cf. news above) is extremely appealing.
And although now the iphone price has lowered, it was twice more expensive on launch. So iphone fans won’t switch but this is a very cool smartphone for many other people.
Let the competition works.
Oh I do want the competition to work. Only if there is any competition will Apple have any need to continue to improve their phone.
And I hope there will be several more phones with the Android OS. I just think that this launch and this phone have been pretty weak. I’m hoping Android OS improves fast and that better phones come out.
Also, the number of people who hate Apple & the iPhone I would guess is a pretty small niche.
It looks like it’s gonna be selling much more than the iPhone in Japan; or at least that’s what analysts say.
That the iPhone lacks lots of functionality common in Japanese phones and that it doesn’t have keys to complement the touchscreen are pointed at as the reasons for its underwhelming adoption.
On the other hand, when questioned about the new Google model, people seemed to rather having streetview and a keyboard than a slightly slimmer iPhone.
In Japan? Why in Japan? In the whole world, there are hundreds of phones. The iphone is in the top selling only in the US. Maybe there are more Apple fan in the US that anywhere else…
Because Japan has lots of consumers and is one of the countries where mobile phone technology hasn’t been at stone age for a long time already.
It is amazing the kind of crap that is still being sold in the West. Even high end 3G phones are lame when compared to Japanese phones from 10 years ago. This is the reason why the iPhone is doing exceptionally well in Western markets(no need to be no1), because there was no competition at all, now that a phone that seems to satisfy mobile phone connoisseurs, things might change.
I don’t care one way or the other, i only switch phones when they break.
Edited 2008-09-24 15:24 UTC
The USA is not “the West”.
Competition is good. I cant wait to see the market 2 years from now!
I have an iPhone and love it.
However, what Google is doing with Android is brilliant, all iPhone fans should be happy.
“Good” competition from Google will mean Apple will have to keep pushing the iPhone, so we will get features we may not have gotten, or those features will be released soon rather than later.
The Android fans should be happy the iPhone is there too, for one, Android wouldn’t be what it is today without the iPhone and future innovation from Apple will most likely end up in Android.
Both sides win.
Interested to see what MS comes up with and what it can do to match what Apple and Google are doing…
I don’t think Apple’s OS or Android has to “win”. I love to see a market where 3 or more OS’s will compete for market share. I’m sure Symbian and others are running to catch up. Who knows, maybe the Amiga OS will find it’s way into a phone?
apple or google has to WIN.
it’s a pain to write an app in objective-c for one thing and code in java for the other.
Cry me a f’n river. Me just can’t get behind that true MVC paradigm and that setMyBrain:toStop: notation.
It looks to be a different kind of phone for a different kind of person (one who likes typing, by the looks of things). So Google appear to be saying “We are not competing directly with Apple but appealing to a different audience, one which is keen on Google applications.” Only time will tell whether consumers buy that idea or whether consumers see it as a matter of A versus B, Apple versus Google, regardless of what each phone may offer. If consumers do see it that way, then Apple has nothing to fear from this model and consumers will continue to see the iPhone as the “winner”. But I guess this model is only the first of many. Where I live, T-Mobil are pretty sucky. If Google are to sell more than a darn modest number, a better model of phone is needed, available on the Vodafone, Orange and O2 networks.
Google is not saying anything with this phone gosh. Google does the software other companies do the hardware as much you cant blame google if the hardware is bad.
Of course you can hold Google to account, and you should. Who makes what has nothing to do with it. This will always be seen as a “Google phone”, as Google and world +dog know quite well. Google have a brand and a rep to protect. First rule of that is you don’t put your name to something that doesn’t live up to your image. And if you do, you take the flak.
As it happens, I think blame is a futile activity, in this as in other walks of life. By the looks of things, this just isn’t a very good phone unless you are really really keen on Google apps, and its price is close enough to the iPhone to let folks think “I might as well get an iPhone anyway”. However, if a head of steam builds up around Android then we can expect much better and slicker phones to come in 2009.
Considering??? God how bad journalism, Nokia already announced that Symbian is royalty free and open source back in SUMMER! http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1230416
Well, neither saying that Symbian would already be 100% open source is correct yet.
Here’s an exact quote from the article you referred to:
So they are talking about future plans, not about the current situation yet. But maybe using the word “planning” instead of “considering” might describe their plans better?
What is this obsession with the iphone? 80% of the phones today use Symbian and java. Why do we even talk about competition with the iphone. The iphone is a niche for Apple fans. Enough with all that Apple fanboyings. It’s all about Symbian and Android (because the news is about Android), so please stop talking about the iphone that has maybe 0.5% of market share. Why don’t we talk about openMoko as well? did Jesus Christ even have an iPhone?
Edited 2008-09-24 12:18 UTC
wtf?
Of course not. He had a direct line to God
Clever marketing and hype?
Anyway, I’ve been wondering the same. I don’t even like touch screens in tiny mobile phones that much. But I admit that Apple’s design department has done its work very well again (besides of their marketing department). But aren’t we supposed to be using our phones for useful work too instead of just admiring their advanced and fashionable design? In that department, usefulness in real daily tasks, I don’t see the Apple iPhone as anything particularly impressive.
Why this obsession with working 24/7 at any cost? I very rarely use my phone (not an iPhone) for useful work. Not because I can’t, but because I have no interest in working around the clock. Beyond calling and texting, I mainly use my phone for some casual gaming to kill the time, taking the odd note, and looking up things to the web to settle debates in pubs or find out when the next train or bus leaves. The iPhone could handle all these tasks better than my current phone.
Can’t we do both? Wrist watches stopped being about simply telling time and have been fashion statements as well as time telling devices from more or less the start. And it’s not like the iPhone is the first mobile phone to sell on its looks.
And at any rate I still hold that for quick web surfing on the run, no phone I’ve seen can beat the iPhone.
I was just talking about real life usability, not about working overtime 24/7 using your tiny mobile phone…
A cell phone has some typical useful purposes, and those are the things that matter most in the end, to most users. Playing games just isn’t among those relevant tasks, to most users.
If you find iPhone perfect for your uses, fine. In fact, I’m not completely ruling out that I couldn’t become an iPhone convert too… – but I’m just still not convinced that it would be the ultimate best option for me, everyone and their cat…
I would choose a Nokia E90 Communicator for that purpose (if I had money to buy one..) especially as it works very well as a phone too. For example, it has a 800×352 screen compared to 320×480 of iPhone, better standby time, QWERTY keyboard, and many other features lacking from iPhone: http://www.esato.com/phones/index.php/phone=333,cp=295 Touchscreen? Well, maybe it can make browsing the web with a mobile phone quite handy, but if you know how to use a keyboard, browsing web with a Communicator is easy too.
Edited 2008-09-25 09:47 UTC
They went through the trouble of signing up Amazon to be their music partners, but did not include a head-phone jack. Want you to pay for the converter? When will these phone manufacturers learn? Are these “media phones” out ni the market and they are still trying to sell you their cheap headsets.
Why should Open Source Symbian be a reaction to Android? Nokia is walking the Open Source road since the first release of Maemo in 2005. Nokia contributes to WebKit, continued the walk with the buyout of Trolltech. Nokia also hinted that Qt will be ported to Symbian/S60. Open Sourcing Symbian is just the next logical step.
Well, of course there’s much more than just that. But there have been quite many analysts and others who have been wondering whether Nokia’s love affair with open source is indeed partly motivated by the recent open source boom also in the mobile industry (Android being the most anticipated new thing in that open source boom):
http://www.product-reviews.net/2008/06/25/open-source-affect-symbia…
http://www.techcrunchit.com/2008/06/24/symbian-goes-open-source-cou…
Besides, these days practically every bigger IT company seems to want to pose as the true friend and supporter of open source…
But there have also been some doubts concerning Nokia’s true dedication to open source (= free software), and whether it would rather like to bend the open source community to serve itself and its non-open rules including software patents, DRM, subsidized business models etc:
http://edulix.wordpress.com/2008/06/14/nokia-does-not-get-it/
http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/06/13/nokia-open-source-developers-n…