handbook
 
tourfaq
Monday, December 14th, 2009 | Posted by Editor - Blog News Service

Google to launch its own Nexus One phone next year, maybe (Updates)

The next Google Phone ?

The next Google Phone ?

Google staff are trying out a new unbranded phone that could be launched next year and sold directly to consumers, rather than being sold by network operators.

The Google Phone or Gphone has been rumoured for a long time, and while many of us have doubted its existence until now, the evidence is mounting up. Numerous Google staff are actually using an unbranded Gphone, and pictures of it have been posted via Twitter. It’s called the Nexus One, it runs Google Android, obviously, and it’s being manufactured for Google by HTC, which is already well known for making Android and Windows Mobile phones.

Google’s Mobile blog says staff are “dogfooding” the device (a term that has long been standard at Microsoft). It says: “We recently came up with the concept of a mobile lab, which is a device that combines innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android to experiment with new mobile features and capabilities, and we shared this device with Google employees across the globe. This means they get to test out a new technology and help improve it.”

Apparently, Googlers aren’t supposed to be tweeting the details of the Google Phone, but they have no problem tweeting about how awesome it is. And they also apparently have no problem showing it off. And not surprisingly, pictures of the device are starting to hit the web. Without further ado, this is it.

Cory O’Brien, a San Francisco-based blogger, got his hands on one tonight and tweeted out that picture. He also notes that, “Google Phone = iPhone + a little extra screen and a scroll wheel. Great touch screen, and Android.”

As you can see, the Google Phone, which is apparently being called the “Nexus One” (for more on that, see here), does look exactly like the HTC Passion, which everyone was including in their posts earlier. You’ll also notice that there’s a key difference: It’s not HTC-branded at all.

And I’d bet one of the things they’re testing is Google Voice, which was the application Apple refused to allow on the iPhone. It remains to be seen whether Apple will back down, because freedom from that kind of control could be one of the Gphone’s attractions.

Reproducing an image posted to Twitpic by Cory O’Brien (coryobrien.com), Engadget notes:

the image above is an exact match to that leaked HTC Passion / Bravo image from October, only this time lacking the HTC logo on the top-side bezel. Besides the pic, O’Brien tweets that the “Google Phone = iPhone + a little extra screen and a scroll wheel. Great touch screen, and Android.”

It’s not clear how the sales pitch is going to go, but the idea is that the Gphone will be sold direct to consumers, not via a network contract. This could make it look expensive, because the hardware will not be subsidised by overcharging for mobile phone calls. (Quite why a smartphone with a 3-4 inch screen costs roughly twice as much as a netbook with a 10 inch screen and a hard drive is still a mystery to me, but it does.)

However, network operators will be able to get around this problem very easily by offering contracts with discounted minutes on “Bring your own Gphone” deals.

Google could also make the Nexus One available reasonably cheaply because it will make money from the Google advertising that users will see when they use Google “properties” such as search, Gmail, YouTube, and so on. There could also be plenty of money-making opportunities in location-based services, such as directing users to the nearest eatery, bank, or whatever. It would be interesting to know what the lifetime value of a Gphone user might be, but Google must have done some calculations.

Although some blogs and magazines have confidently suggested the Nexus One will be launched in January, bear in mind there has been no official announcement, just a lot of speculation. But it is starting to look as though Google might be serious.

Update: InfoSync has noted that “FCC’s database today revealed that the HTC Nexus One, the smartphone Google Mobile currently uses for internal development of upcoming mobile features and capabilities, only sends and receives 3G data at 1700 MHz. In other words, the U.S. version of the HTC Nexus One is going to T-Mobile USA, and T-Mobile USA only.” (The US uses two incompatible wireless standards on three different spectrum bands.) It concludes:

Related Posts Related Websites

Tags: , ,

jobs
about

Comments are closed