Nexus Is Born
Google’s first phone, the Nexus One was released to much pomp and ceremony this week. Jono Bacon and Stuart ‘Aq’ Langridge step back from the glossy press photos and discussions of the device itself and instead explore what knock on effect Google’s new offering could have on the cellular industry.
51 Comments to “Nexus Is Born”
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Android may be good, but I think the real alternative for us geeks lies with Maemo. A real, top to bottom, hackable phone like the N900 is my dream machine. To need to crack anything, you’re allowed to get root access by default. The problem is the price… I could shell out €150 or even €200 for a phone, but €600 is way too much.
At $600 it may be a lot of money, but this is release day, and prices are bound to be at a premium!
I’m expecting to see some massive price cuts over the coming months as more phones come to market, in addition Google have the facility (I think) to further drop the price as there is no middle-man or re-seller who is wantiong to make a bit of profit.
My guess is that it will be a while before there is a price drop. Google’s still selling the Android Dev Phone 1 to registered Android developers for $400, just like they were when that phone was released a year ago.
Personally I do not trust Google because of there overall desire to collect as much information which the vast majority of people would consider to be ‘personal’ or ‘private’. While they are currently using it to improve there service they are doing things with the data which I do not agree with, such as using it to provide targeted ads. What if they start to abuse there power or information database more in the future.
Surely it’s just another android phone. It’s not even the first phone Google has sold themselves. No big deal.
A data-only network sounds like a great, no, inevitable idea!
It’s in Google’s interest to commoditise the phone market, as with any market which provides access to their apps & ads. I guess their reason for creating an open source mobile OS, and now for selling unlocked phones directly to consumers is to open up the mobile phone and cellular network markets and drive down costs for consumers – thereby reducing barriers for those consumers to access Google’s services. The only weakness I can see at the moment is that the current selection of Android phones are very expensive, high specification beasts.
I’ve bought my last three mobile phones unlocked directly from Nokia, then signed up to a very cheap SIM-only contract. That’s exactly what the likes of Nokia and Google want, but what the likes of O2 and Vodaphone really don’t want. A data-only network would upset them even more because then they just become mobile ISPs.
danielsbrewer: Which phones does Google already sell? As far as I know all other Android phones are sold by a phone manufacturer or network provider? The big deal about the Nexus One is the amount of influence Google had on the design, although given that there are no industrial product designers on the Google team the biggest part of this is the software user experience. But this is the closest to a “Google Phone” that has ever existed – (mainly) designed by Google and sold directly to consumers by Google.
danielsbrewer: Which phones does Google already sell? As far as I know all other android phones are sold by a phone manufacturer or network provider? The big deal about the Nexus One
A data only network only sounds like a good idea if you have no idea what it takes to implement a decent voice service.
So far the only reasonable guarantee of QoS we can make on data networks is by vastly over provisioning the amount of bandwidth available for the estimated demand. There is no reasonably low overhead way doing reservations, and no good story about maintaining call quality during cell handovers. If you wanted to do this, you’d first have to chuck IP straight in the bin. And if you’re chucking IP in the bin, your next step might as well be to implement GSM.
Tola
Firstly LTE (also called 4G) is a data only network, Voice services are provided as voip calls, 3G has a separate bearer services for voice and data. And 2G is really a circuit switched network with some data bearer services grafted on top.
Operators don’t like subsidizing phones, it is a the major cost to the business, but nobody is going to stop the practice. I would always suggest getting a phone on prepay and then getting a SIM only deal to put in it. Also remember to factor in the £10 to unlock the phone.
I think Android will seriously change the landscape. Because applications do not need to be approved to run. The only constraint is that they need to be signed by the developer, using a self signed certificate. Everybody else (Apple, symbian, Palm, blackberry) all require applications signed with various types of certificate.
“Broccoli Killer”
I forgot to check this out till now – initial thoughts – WANT.
There’s a box sitting on the desk next to me with one of them in it. Too tempting to start having a look at it…
At least it looks a little less fugly than the existing gphones. Android still has a long way to go to be as popular as the iPhone OS, but if they can manage to make it vendor agnostic in a way that still allows people to get them at cheap prices on their contracts it’d certainly help with the market penetration.
If you MUST own a mobile phone… Don’t buy that… buy this… http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo_FreeRunner
Can it actually make a call yet? Openmoko is great in principle, but it just hasn’t delivered on the promise.
Sure can! It’s my sole mobile phone. The latest SHR unstable release is very, er… stable!
I have a Freerunner and I must say that it’s a great phone if you don’t care about the “phone” part. The audio quality sucks and the other party often complains about a buzzing sound (even after I RMA’d the phone to have that problem fixed). It’s also pretty slow compared to the other smartphones on the market now.
That having been said, as a Linux-based toy with a wireless data connection it’s actually very useful. There are a few distributions out that support it (some based on getting the phone functionality to work better, others more focused on the hackability of the software) so if you’re an embedded Linux geek like myself it’s a worthy toy to have.
To be honest, though, when I close my eyes at night I still dream of owning a N900
I have a carrot, and I must say that it’s a great chainsaw if you don’t care about it not being a chainsaw
I have one of the later Freerunners, with the buzz fix issue addressed and must say (after a little tinkering, admittedly) sound quality is very good.
Does the OpenMono run Android?
Yes (but don’t use it
). You can find a list of distros here, http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Download
Android is backwards compatible if you stick within a particular feature set. I am concerned about manufactures adding features to an old implementation and breaking something. I think the nexus will be Google’s way of pushing manufactures and carriers to use the latest android implementation or at least staying within the specified API. If Google ships their own phone with the latest android and gains a large chunk of the market it will give developers a reason to write code for the largest audience. Writing one app that works on all android phones will be critical to android winning in the long run.
this link shows the relative market share of different android versions.
http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-versions.html
Having been a long-time G1 user, I’m really interested in the Nexus One, though I’m probably not going to be able to get one immediately.
However, I do think that Google being involved in Android does raise some interesting points related to privacy in the modern world. It’s easy to pick Google out as a company that is trying to know everything about us for the purposes of selling advertising, but really nearly anyone providing a service at this point is trying to accomplish exactly that. It’s Google’s pervasiveness in many people’s lives that has begun to scare many people.
The dialog about what data we provide, usually without even thinking about it, has led to some interesting conversations with people who may not have otherwise been terribly interested in that topic. However, if I have a problem with Android, it’s that tight integration into only the services owned by Google. Luckily, much of that could be changed in Android by porting the applications to use other services, though that’s only useful in the event you can install custom firmwares (not sure the Nexus One allows this), and you’re willing to invest the work. To date, no one has.
Nexus One does indeed allow this.
Google phone Nexus One is default industry standard.
@sil You meant Goog411 not Google Voice right?
I think I might have done, yeah. It was just illustrating the general principle, though.
One thing we are going to be trying to do more and more is spread the word of each shot to encourage people to join us in the discussion. As such, we would like to encourage you, the awesome Shot Of Jaq community to share the link of this shot elsewhere and post the link here.
For this shot this could include Android websites and forums, general phone news sites, gadget sites and more. Is this something you could folks can help with?
So….does anyone think it was an accident that Google Voice, the Gizmo 5 purchase, and the Nexus One are all happening around the same time? This isn’t an iPhone killer, it’s possibly a carrier killer.
In my mind there is no doubt that as the networks get faster and as voice becomes more prevalent on data networks, traditional phone business will reduce, but it is not as if the carriers will be snuffed out: they will just become mainly data networks.
Between google voice and skype, I don’t have a phone any more. In the U.S, google voice will connect a telephone number it can call on the regular phone networks with any other phone number for free.
It’s about six bucks to get a telephone number with skype.
So I can have google voice call my skype number and connect me with any other telephone in the U.S. without charge. It’s pretty awesome.
The problem with google is they have too much info. Its scary they have our emails, our search data and then they have dns(which they can see your entire traffic) and the android phones. They have way way way too much info about you and its very suspect. I dont think the company are evil (like a certain other multinational company that shall remain nameless) and I dont think they have done anything for us not to trust them but its scary. As for the nexus one it seems to be great phone but like microsoft moving into the xbox and the zune, software companies dont make good hardware manufacturers. So I expect there to be some problems down the line but I hope im wrong.
For all the talk of this move being a carrier killer still at the end of the day your service is currently only going to be provided by one carrier. I take it you still get billed by the carrier for the (optional) contract part.
To really make the carriers into must a bit-pipe I can see goggle bulk-buying bandwidth and having their own billing system. This could improve coverage; especially 3G (which is important because the per-bit costs are much less) by google having relationships with many carriers within one country. i.e. you would always be roaming – but the costs would actually be reasonable for once.
Having a large number of users, and massive amount of traffic that they could switch traffic between carriers at will and this would give google huge bargaining power.
And strong carrier relationships might have other advantages. I know that apple with visual voicemail and their mobile push was the first company to really integrate inside a telco network. Google clearly doesn’t need that tech as it has google voice. But what could google do with access to cell-tower triangulation (send you ads for shops you go past?), or free SMS (very low power push notifications to improve battery life?)
And what if google bought some mobile spectrum and subsidised femtocells.
It will be very interesting to see how google push into this market. Perhaps it is not whether the Nexus One an iPhone killer but instead how plausible that google is a telco killer.
I can see the telco killer angle, but at $530 the Nexus is hardly ‘game changing’ is it?
Had it been $199 (or even $299) that the rumour mill was reporting, it would have set a million geek in motion (me included)…
Having read the in-depth reviews, unless Google does something very big and very soon, the Nexus will be just another Android phone.
My contract’s up a few months and in a straight shoot-out, the Motorola Droid (Milestone in the UK) beats the Nexus in many areas, and will be my next Android phone unless Google get their act together…
The answer Aqs point about Apple not decided to go carrier agnostic…
It was because Apple couldn’t have done some of the original iPhone features had they been agnostic. Like visual voicemail for example. At the time it was unheard of to have a voice mail that didn’t suck and for Apple to fix it involved the carrier changing their voice mail back end to work a new modern way just for the iPhone.
Apple were never going to release a phone that was just like all the others but prettier, it had to be a game changing or they needn’t bother, so in the end partnering with someone was their only option to offer all the features.
If rumours are to be believed, AT&T was not Apple’s first choice carrier, but Verizon turned them down because they refused to allow Apple to dictate these changes needed to give a better experience. A choice I’m sure they have nightmares over even to this day.
A while back Google made a bid on wireless spectrum in the US. In 2007 Google asked that some regulations be added to the commercial licenses of the spectrum, only two of the four regulations were accepted by the FCC. While Google didn’t win any spectrum themselves, the regulations they got in paved the way for an android type device. Things like the android app store could have been snuffed out without the regulations.
http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/20070720_wireless.html
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/07/fcc-sets-700mhz-auction-rules-limited-open-access-no-wholesale-requirement.ars
Although Google is making a big deal of the fact that this phone is being sold free from a network contract, it still is not available to people in Ireland.
When I click on the button on the Google web site to order a phone I get a message “I am sorry that this product is not available in your country”. I can’t understand why that should be the case. Why is Google discriminating against Irish people?
I know that I could get a friend in another country to order on my behalf and then ship it to me, but I don’t want to go to such lengths to give money to a company who does not want to sell to me
Not available in France either. Will probably be at the end of the 1st quarter. If you want, I can get you one… But I’m afraid it’ll be shipped with an AZERTY keyboard :p
Nobody is going to kill the iPhone or change the phone market while this crap is going on…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8451473.stm
Get it together chaps!
The IPhone got just as much backlash over support as the Nexus One if not more. Google have already stated they need to do better. As for me I got my Nexus One last Friday and love it.
Something Jono said (in the shot) seemed to imply, imho – correct me if that was not the intended meaning… Seemed to imply that the iPhone introduced touch to phones. That is not the case, despite what we have heard Apple and its followers say so often, the iPhone was not the first phone to use touch.
First to bring it into the mainstream, though.
Aq said: “Google are big enough that they can say We are gonna go and sell this phone to ordinary people and carriers you are just gonna have to deal with that… And other firms cannot do that because they are not really big enough… Apple did not do that for example, I don’t know why Apple didn’t do it because they are not a big enough deal or not, but they didn’t [...]“
You more or less answered your own question there, Aq. “…Its just a nice thing that Google is, at least theoretically, on our side…”
Apple didn’t do it, because they are not on our side. Consumer lock-in IS Apple, it is a massive part of their DNA, you see it going on in almost every aspect of Apples activities. It would probably take the death of their CEO to change this – and even then it is a long shot.
Yeah, but being locked into Apple is one thing; being locked into AT&T hasn’t helped any of their customers. Apple are all in favour of consumer choice as long as Apple aren’t one of the choices.
just bought a htc hero for an insane amount of money so I’m going to stick my fingers in my ears for the next year or 2..
I’d like to think that the main advantage of Google putting out their own phone is that it will be a “premier” experience device, and other manufacturers will compete against it. This will raise the quality of Android-based phones in general.
It’d also be nice if it started a trend of direct-sale of unlocked phones, but I won’t hold my breath on that one. For now, I’ll just be happy that T-Mobile is happy to give you an unlock code upon request after 3 months (or immediately if you buy a phone from them without a subsidy).
What Google want to do:
I think Google wants to provide a store where consumers can buy a variety of good supported Android phones and where you have good price transparency and different carriers to choose from and take way a lot of the worry that comes from the massive amount of different Android phones (see paradox of choice) This will migitate the problems we see in the Windows world with the varying quality.
I guess Chrome OS computers could be sold similarly.
Ars says it is great:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010/01/nexus-one-review.ars/1
sil (12 Jan, 12:32 am) Wrote: “Yeah, but being locked into Apple is one thing; being locked into AT&T hasn’t helped any of their customers. Apple are all in favour of consumer choice as long as Apple aren’t one of the choices.”
I’m sorry, what?
May I correct that please?
“Apple are all in favour of consumer choice as long as the consumer’s choice is between Apple, Apple, Apple or Apple.”
My point was: if consumers have a choice between A, B, C, and Apple, then Apple are against choice and will try and lock you in to Apple. If consumers have a choice between X, Y, and Z, and Apple aren’t in that market, Apple are all in favour of making it as easy as possible for them to choose whichever one of X, Y, or Z they want.
Ok, I think I understand what you are getting at… There is, imho, a correction to make though:
“If consumers have a choice between X, Y, and Z, and Apple aren’t in that market, Apple are all in favour of making it as easy as possible for them to choose whichever one”
…To…
“If consumers have a choice between X, Y, and Z, and Apple aren’t in that market, Apple are all in favour of totally not giving a shit about them”
Was that wrong? I wish it was.
I guess I feel the same way about the Nexus/Apple debate as I do about your Skype discussion (listening to the episodes out of order, I suppose).
Apple did a great thing by changing perceptions, but they also have a locked in mindset on how to do certain things… the venerable (debatable?) Apple Way.
Google can thank Apple for pointing the way and pioneering, but still poke around the edges of where the Apple Way falls down and come out of it with a huge success.
The kerfluffle over the Apple App Store or the ability to add apps without visiting the App Store are just two examples. Google can go a lot further with this.
Also, never forget, Google as a Content and Applications company (and not a hardware company) probably has an edge when it comes to agility. They can move quicker to round out its handsets (Nexus and otherwise) than Apple probably can.
The nice thing about the Nexus is that it will probably slow down some of the Android handset feature fracturing that has been going on. Come to think of it, it is another example of an agile move given that Android phones have only been out for something like 18 months.
PS… Please implement a subscribe to follow ups via email so we can keep the conversation going…
Jim Jones (15 Jan 8:51 pm) Wrote: “Apple did a great thing by changing perceptions” and “… can thank Apple for pointing the way and pioneering”
What makes you say that? Can you elaborate/explain please?
By “changing perceptions,” I mean that Apple changed the perception that a smart phone was mostly a business device. Previously, most smart phones were in the hangs or business people and used for business purposes. Not all for sure, but in general, I think that is a safe claim. Apple made a device that a non-business person was interested in and has many “smart phone”-ish features if you don’t feel that it is truly a smart phone.
It did that through many ways, probably too numerous to name here, but ease of use, a simplified interface for using and expanding the device (through apps), and touch (versus pen) interactions are among those changes.