Everything You Wanted to Know About the Google Nexus One

Google’s upcoming Tuesday press conference is likely to mark the debut of the Nexus One, the search company’s own Android-based smartphone.

Nexus One should showcase the latest generation of the Linux-based open source Android operating system. It’s also the first phone that is expected to be directly marketed by Google, setting higher expectations for the phone.

Here’s what we know about the phone so far.

Hardware

The Nexus One was designed by HTC, which has a close relationship with Google. HTC created the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1, and has released at least five Android handsets since the operating system launched in October 2008.

Though packed in a big, white box with the Google logo printed prominently, the Nexus One clearly shows the stamp of HTC’s design sensibilities. Photos show a device similar to the HTC Droid Eris phone with its trackball and four buttons at the bottom of the phone.

The Nexus One has a 1-GHz Snapdragon CPU, a 3.7-inch 480 x 800 display, 512 MB of of RAM and an expandable 4-GB microSD card, says Engadget. The 1-GHz processor alone should make the Nexus one of the fastest smartphones available currently.

By contrast, the Palm Pre has a 600-MHz Texas Instruments OMAP3430 processor and the Motorola Droid runs a 550-MHz Arm Cortex A8 processor. Click here to read more.. »

Tech News January 20th 2010

What Google Must Learn from Its Nexus One Troubles

Oh, how quickly they turn against you! Many media outlets that worked themselves into a frenzy over the Google Nexus One smartphone before it was announced 10 days ago are now attacking Google for what turned out to be a minor announcement followed quickly by complaints from upset customers over poor customer support, poor 3G connections, and high termination fees, plus gripes from SDK-less developers.

Much of the tech press in recent years has confused fact and fiction, spending billions of bytes discussing rumors with little or no foundation with all the seriousness of a call to war or a presidential campaign. (They do it because people love these stories, of course, and read them eagerly.)

When the Nexus One was announced, I was disappointed, since there were just a few improvements over existing Android devices. The fact that Google was selling the device directly over its Web site seemed to be much ado about nothing, given that buyers had to sign a T-Mobile contract to use it. Plus, it’s not as if Web sales is a new idea.

The hope was that Google might assert strong leadership in the mobile space. And it took the rumor-happy tech press a week or so to realize their emperor had no clothes.

Two weeks after the frenzy has subsided and the finger-pointing has begun, we can take several lessons from Google’s Nexus One escapade: Click here to read more.. »

Tech News January 18th 2010

Google unveils Nexus One ’superphone’

Calling it their “superphone,” Google unveiled the Nexus One on Tuesday, marking the online search giant’s first leap into the smartphone market.

The phone, which goes head to head with Apple’s darling of the market, the iPhone, is sold only through a Web store operated by Google and, unlike the iPhone and most other current smartphones, is available either with or without mobile service.

“We are very happy to be able to offer a choice,” said Mario Queiroz, Google’s vice president of product management.

T-Mobile is the initial service provider. Verizon in the United States and Vodafone in Europe will be coming on board later, and more operators are expected.

Already available Tuesday, the phone costs $180 with a contract or $530 unlocked, leaving the phone open to other carriers.

Among the Nexus One features Google announced at an invitation-only event at its California headquarters was text without typing. A voice-enabled keyboard allows users to send texts, e-mails or Facebook updates by speaking into the phone.

It is a global-system device with a 3.7-inch touchscreen, 5-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi connectivity, an accelerometer and a compass, according to Google. Click here to read more.. »

Tech News January 5th 2010
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