Is Anyone Buying T-Mobile's Googlephone? 454
Hugh Pickens writes "Laura Holson writes in the NY Times that she 'wandered down to the T-Mobile store at Ninth Ave. and 43rd St. in New York City to see what kind of crowds — if any — were lining up to buy the new T-Mobile G1 which went on sale Wednesday' and saw no lines out the door, no crowding at the counter, and a complete lack of crowds. The iPhone appears to still be the gold standard and Etan Horowitz writes that the G1 'doesn't do a great job showcasing its potential. It isn't as intuitive as the iPhone, and it may take average users a while to figure out basic and advanced shortcuts and features' and 'may appeal more to techies who value open-source products and don't mind a somewhat steep learning curve.' Part of the reason for slow interest may also be that T-Mobile's 3G high-speed data network won't be up and running in many cities until the end of the year."
Because they're not Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably because T-Mobile and Google don't have the Apple hype-machine/blogosphere/rumor sites going insane over unreleased products?
Yeah well... (Score:2, Insightful)
Most cell phone users don't know how to use their cameras, or calendar functions, or pair a device to their phones with bluetooth. How many iPhone users have I met who didn't know that their phones had Wifi, or thought that "Wifi" meant their cellular data plans?
I'm not going to base my opinion of a new device on how many people who don't even know how to use their dumb phones get excited about it.
Re:Because they're not Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably because T-Mobile and Google don't have the Apple hype-machine/blogosphere/rumor sites going insane over unreleased products?
Yup, because google doesn't know anything about advertising ...
gee, what could the reasons be here? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. People don't even know if they'll have jobs next week, would they really be taking on an expensive new phone and plan?
2. There's no absolute media saturation and frenzy over the G1. Apple is very adept at building their marketing campaigns into beasts like self-sustaining fusion reactions that produce more energy than they consume, like firestorms sucking all the oxygen out of the city. Media that doesn't even want to report on tech will end up reporting on the craze surrounding the tech.
3. The G1, while building on the success of Google, isn't coming with quite the same mac/ipod buzz that the iPhone had going with it. Again, this goes back to 2, Apple is building upon the wave of successful hype of previous products.
I hear that RIM is trying to improve upon their berries given all of this competition from Apple and Google. To that I say GREAT! The more competition the better. The last berry I used was a hell of a product but RIM has been floundering for a while now. I want to see them recapture the mojo instead of flaming out like Palm.
Personally, I don't know which phone I'll end up getting. I'm no longer working in a capacity that requires a company phone so I'm not likely to have another berry unless I change jobs. The iPhone is incredibly seductive but the data plan sucks and I don't like it being closed-architecture. I don't yet know enough about the G1 to know whether it'll be a good fit but I like what I've seen so far.
I know why I won't buy it (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't available here in Finland, so... Yeah.
But well, I've never understood that culture in USA... Comparing products based on the day that they come out. Just like with movie theatres there, the most used way to determine if movie is successfull seems to be how well it sells during the first weekend: Before anyone has had the chance to see it and tell others if it is good or not.
I wouldn't think much based on just these days. Also, the "Steeper learning curve" and "Shortcuts might take some time to get used to..."... WTF? Does ANYONE think of those things when buying a phone? "I would buy that but the learning curve is too steep..."? I would understand if it was "The user interface is horrible" but this?
I can guess why (Score:2, Insightful)
Now Google may be known for innovating and be a household name, but was the android phone marketed as being connected to Google? Not only than, but Google didn't design the physical phone, just the platform.
Or, to think of it another way, the major selling point for Android is that it is an open source platform for handheld devices. Does the general public get excited over open source? The reason for the lack of excitement over the first Android phone is pretty obvious when you think about it.
Re:I love it (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Because they're not Apple (Score:4, Insightful)
My point is that it is beyond advertising. Apple doesn't need to anything (like not comment on a rumor) and it's the talk of the world.
Plus I've never seen an ad the Googlephone...
No lines??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course not, if you ordered one a couple of months ago you would already have it. Instead of madly lining up at some retail shop to buy your new piece of hip candy (and then still have to take the damn thing home to activate it), you can order it and wait for it to be delivered to your door.
Apple does make good products, but they also are very adept at engineering a crowd to harness for marketing purposes.
Re:Because they're not Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably because T-Mobile and Google don't have the Apple hype-machine/blogosphere/rumor sites going insane over unreleased products?
Without a doubt. However, it's not like these phones have reviewed exceptionally well.
worse (Score:3, Insightful)
Fox News or Rush Limbaugh. He didn't call them part of the driveby media, though, so I'll go with Fox.
Re:Yeah well... (Score:5, Insightful)
I bought it (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sure what they mean about a non-intuitive interface. What more freakin' intuitive than a physical keyboard?
Is "pinching" intuitive before somebody shows it to you. But I guess it's just an article of faith that anything not done by Apple must, by definition, be less intuitive than the Apple version.
On the useless but cool front - I made a skype-out call from the G1 over my wifi network today. Try that with an iPhone. Granted, it's a phone, so sure, what's the point. But it's good to know that even if I terminate my cell plan, the phone isn't a useless brick.
Re:Because they're not Apple (Score:4, Insightful)
Id buy it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:My co-worker got one (Score:4, Insightful)
In reality, every phone feels like a toy if you don't like it.
It's 100% subjective, and reflects on nothing. Some people with big or small hands or fingers feel certain phones feel like a toy. Does that mean they do to the other 99% of the users of said device? No. Does that mean it "feels cheap?" no.
Meanwhile, the apps on this thing alone motivate me to want to get it. I'm trying to sell off my E61i to get a G1.
probably because it's not *innovative* (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably because T-Mobile and Google don't have the Apple hype-machine/blogosphere/rumor sites going insane over unreleased products?
Er...or it could be that the G1 just isn't innovative or unique.
Seriously, what's unique about it?
Apple slowly wedged their foot in the door with iTunes and Quicktime and has built upon each success. Meanwhile, Google has been the 500lb gorilla, but given away every product they offer (and made it work on every other cell phone) and there's no compelling reason to buy a Google phone.
Why would they hype it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because hyping gen 1 of a product is stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
Why the hell would you overhype a version 1.0 product? So you can buy a $600 dumbphone from Apple?
People who bought a rev 1 iPhone got SCREWED. Then the price dropped and Lord Steve gave people credit to spend on more of his garbage. Then Rev 1 of the 3G turned out to be a bigger turd because it got crappy signal, dropped calls, has bad battery life, and crappy apps that crash the phone.
So, moral, don't buy rev 1.
Tough crowd (Score:3, Insightful)
People are writing it off as a failure because there aren't crowds and lines forming to buy it? Seriously?
Seems just about every product ever made would be an utter failure going by that metric.
Stop calling Apple products intuitive (Score:5, Insightful)
The iPhone is NOT any more intuitive than any other phone. It is not intuitive to use two fingers spreading in and out to zoom in and out. It is not intuitive to change the screen orientation by rotating it if it only works when holding the unit somewhat vertical. (That drove my daughter nuts until I explained how gravity works with the phone.)
The iPod is NOT any more intuitive than any other music player. It is not intuitive to have to return to the now-playing screen to change the volume. It is not intuitive to run your finger around a circle to change volume or select items. And not being able to edit play lists is just inexcusable.
The Apple was NOT any more intuitive than any other computer. Dragging the CD to the trashcan to eject it was not intuitive. People exposed to Windows did not deal well with the lack of right click and that silly Apple key until shown what they were for.
Intuitive means directly apprehended or instinctive. Something is not intuitive if basic features require demonstration or having to read the manual. Apple products have some cool features that once exposed to can make them easier to use. That isn't intuitive, it's user friendly.
Re:probably because it's not *innovative* (Score:4, Insightful)
The target of Android is technically not the end-user. The target are the phone-makers. Google wants to ensure that there is something out there that will always be able to run Google Apps.
Re:reputation (Score:2, Insightful)
So which is it? The way a lot of people on Slashdot make it seem, no one can do what the iPhone is doing because it will be a knock off but if it isn't like the iphone it's junk. I think Google made a bad choice using this phone as the first phone to have android but I am optimistic that there will be better phones that will incorporate android down the line. Comparing android to the Iphone is a bit unfair because of what each one does. Google is not going after hardware innovation, they are just putting the potential capabilities in software so that it can run on phones that can further utilize them. Even though I am a t-mobile subscriber I also think starting with T-mobile wasn't the best choice either since T-mobile USA is a subsidiary that seems to be afraid of success. They always stock the ugliest most hideous phones and try to push their own branded junk (Sidekick, Shadow, Wing). I only hope that more phones start getting behind Android and starts the momentum as well as t-mobile starts surpassing being the half-assed wireless company (although their rates aren't bad and they are the most open carrier).
Google will be competing more with Symbian, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile, rather than the Iphone since the Iphone stands in a market all it's own, 1 phone 1 platform. It's the same way as Ubuntu going after the Windows market rather than explictly the Apple market because again, 1 Macintosh 1 Platform. The Iphone will never be diverse enough to gain a majority marketshare if it is going to stay with AT&T and more importantly because it is just 1 phone.
Re:I know why I won't buy it (Score:3, Insightful)
> the most used way to determine if movie is successfull seems to be how well it sells during
> the first weekend: Before anyone has had the chance to see it and tell others if it is good or not.
Ah, but that's the point. They already know the movie is bad, so their only chance to sell it is before people start talking. Remember that you don't have to be good to be successful ;)
Re:Because they're not Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes but Google releases everything as beta first, and limits the rate at which people start using things (see: gmail invites). I suspect this is the "beta" gPhone, which will be continuously refined for a while until they are ready with the real deal. That's when the ad blitz will start.
Re:I bought it (Score:4, Insightful)
By the time the iPhone actually went on sale, everyone in America had seen the commercials showing them the pinch and other basic features that once you think about them they feel natural and you just 'know' how to do other things you've never been shown. If I didn't read slashdot (and google news), I wouldn't know what the G1 is, and I still have no idea what it looks like or how it works. Mind you, I don't care about Android, but its not suprising that no one else does either, no one else knows about it outside the tech world.
And seriously, Skype ... on your cell phone ... are you fucking kidding me. You've got a phone with protocols that are FAR better than the crap Skype uses for talking, the cheap bastards who want to use Skype on their cell phone are probably too cheap to buy a phone that can run it. Using Skype on a cell phone is about the silliest thing I've ever heard of, cell minutes are cheap, stop being such a techie that you look like a dumbass to the rest of the people in the world. If you terminate your plan you're worried about having a use for your phone? Do you not realize how silly that sounds?
'I'm gonna buy a cell phone, then terminate my phone plan, but thats okay because I can also run this app that makes my phone act like a phone when I'm around certain radio signals, and the price difference is great because in 8 years I'll have saved up the money from using skype to pay for the phone.' Just think about that before you respond.
Re:Id buy it (Score:3, Insightful)
'WAIT WAIT WAIT!!!! Its carrier locked? OMG THOSE ASSHOLES, APPLE IS EVIL FOR LOCKING THE PHONE TO THE CARRIER!!@@$#!$@'
Sorry, thought we were talking about the iPhone again, let me switch fanboy modes ...
'I'll just wait for it to be available on AT&T, its running Linux so I'm okay with it being carrier locked. Its still the best phone ever made. Its totally not like having to unlock the iPhone to use on another carrier, I don't accept having to jailbreak and unlock an iPhone to do what I want to do, but its okay that I have to do that with Android handsets.'
Re:Stop calling Apple products intuitive (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, the "intuitive" meme for interfaces bothers me a lot these days. Apparently now it means, "This works the way (the market dominator/my other stuff) works." It's got nothing to do with whether or not the interface is usable out of the gate for an arbitrary user with arbitrary experience.
Re:Stop calling Apple products intuitive (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously the user interface bothers you. But really, you think there is a better phone interface out there? I guess everyone who owns an iPhone must be a fanboy cause the only ones I have heard who don't like them are techies who want a shell prompt for their phone, everyone else seems to love it.
Running your finger around a circle to change the volume is not intuitive? So ... is rotating a number to change the volume not intuitive?
Everything you are ranting about is because you've been trained, poorly, by some other piece of software to do something silly. Except maybe the CD to the trash can, I'll give you that one, but the rest of your arguments are just silly, the fault is your expectations based on other bad designs.
Most of the rest of the non-techie world, and now days a very large portion of the techie worlds seems to think Apple does a pretty good job on UI design, while I realize a lot of these people are what you would probably consider 'stupid', as a general rule when you disagree with everyone else, its generally (not always, but generally) and indication that you have it wrong, not them.
Re:T-Mobile's network is useless (Score:3, Insightful)
Does this Android phone support T-Mobile@Home? I suppose it should but haven't seen any confirmation of that.
But they SHOULD. (Score:3, Insightful)
Because false hype makes the product better.
It did with the iPhone. False hype led to the jailbreaking effort and eventually got Apple to do something they originally didn't want to do: "Mere mortals" developing native ABI applications for the iPhone. It turned the iPhone into a developer platform instead of a toy.
Re:probably because it's not *innovative* (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe it's not multi-touch however. I think that was the intended criticism.
Where the hell do you get that? No, the intended criticism is that isn't sold by Apple, that's all that matters to these people.
Re:Because they're not Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
The G1 lacks enough storage for me, but the data plan is more attractive. The iPhone has the storage but the data plan is a potential nightmare.
Actually I prefer that the G1 has less storage and a microSD slot. MicroSD cards are very inexpensive so it's easy to increase the storage capacity of the device. When flash capacities have doubled (as they have been every year), it's easy to buy a new microSD card for $30, but it's impossible to increase the storage on your iPhone. This only works if your hardware and firmware support the larger microSD sizes, but the G1 supports SDHC cards and firmware updates so it's fairly future proof.
Re:Needs a better name (Score:2, Insightful)
Hmmm "G1" vs "3G." Which is better? Well this one is third generation, and this one is first . . . which should I get?
Re:Because they're not Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Because they're not Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Because they're not Apple (Score:2, Insightful)
Ummm... W580i doesn't use MicroSD, but rather Sony's proprietary Memory Stick Micro (M2). Those are always going to be significantly more expensive than MicroSD, due to lower volume. For example, I just recently picked up three 4GB MicroSD cards from Woot! for $5.99 each.
Re:Stop calling Apple products intuitive (Score:5, Insightful)
A better term might be "discoverable". If you can play with it and figure out what it does without consulting the manual or asking someone else, then it has high "discover-ability". Combine that with "consistent": knowledge of one part of the system helps you to use other parts of the system that you haven't tried yet. Those terms together get at what many people mean when they say "intuitive"
From the time I've spent playing with demo iPhones and Touches the interface was pretty easy to understand. When you turn the phone sideways, it goes into landscape mode and it pretty much does that everywhere, so it is consistent. It is also consistent with what I would expect in the real world; if I'm orienting the screen sideways, I probably want to use it so the long edge is the top now. You can also learn that pretty easily just by trying it, so it is also discoverable. When the iPhone breaks consistency, like the lack of a landscape keyboard in some apps, people complain, which indicates that consistent behavior is part of what we think of as "intuitive".
Zooming in and out works by pinching and pulling, which isn't very discoverable, but it makes sense a certain amount of real-world logical sense ( I'm stretching a photo to make it bigger, squishing it to make it smaller). Once you learn it, you can try that same action in other places and it will do pretty much what you expect (discoverable and consistent). Of course, you can get away with some of those things on a media player because many operations aren't really destructive; you can play with the device to see how it works. If stretching a word processing document ripped it in half and deleted it, that would probably be a different story.
I've tried the Android emulator a bit, so I have some familiarity with the interface. I think I could pretty much figure out how to do most things I'd want to do with it, but it definitely has the feeling of a computer interface shrunk to fit a phone. I think it is discoverable, but from playing with it and reading the reviews, it isn't consistent, so it ultimately isn't as discoverable as the iPhone is.
The iPhone software, on the other hand, feels more like it is purpose-built for the phone; like a part of the device as opposed to running on it. Even the main screen evokes a keypad layout like a touch tone phone rather than the desktop metaphor that Android shoehorns in.
Ultimately, I think that is Android's major challenge. It can't easily become part of a device out of the box because it could run on a range of hardware, while the iPhone software only has to support the iPhone and can blend smoothly with the hardware experience. This is in some ways more important than the relationship of Windows and OS X to their various hardware since we have certain expectations about how a phone should perform that PC's don't have. There is potential for Android to become more discoverable and consistent; personally I'm going to wait for the next Android phone to see if it has improved.
Re:My co-worker got one (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not 100% subjective. I've never handled a G1, but of course the build quality varies in some products. Cheap and thin plastic pieces will bend or give more than they should. Poor mechanical design may mean that moving parts don't move smoothly, don't lock in position, or move too much. High tolerances for sloppy manufacturing may mean the pieces fit together loosely, so they shift subtly as you use the device.
All of that resembles normal wear on an older item. It's no surprise that people will say things like "it feels like it's about to fall apart" because it reminds them of other things that actually fell apart.
Conversely, the iPhone is very tightly integrated. It has no real moving pieces and the connections are extremely snug. It does not feel like 20 different pieces of plastic and metal stuck together, it feels like one solid unit. That makes a difference.
Re:Because they're not Apple (Score:2, Insightful)