Second Google Android Phone Revealed 176
KrispyDroid writes "The world's second Google Android phone has been unveiled — by an Australian-based electronics company called Kogan. It will ship worldwide on Jan 29. It looks like a surprisingly nice form factor, not unlike a Blackberry Bold. The phones will be sold without a contract at low prices — $A299 ($US192)."
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:When will it become *our* phones? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want something completely open, you can run Trolltech's Qtopia on the latest Openmoko hardware.
Re:When will it become *our* phones? (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is that Android is "tivoizable" and this was actually done on the HTC+TMobile product, making it no more interesting than the iPhone. Until we get a phone that doesn't use any code signing, nobody is going to be very interested in the product, because it's merely an iPhone competitor (and the iPhone has Apple's sexy marketing behind it, so you might as well just develop for that and make more money).
If this doesn't use any code signing, then this might be the beginning of Android getting serious. If it does use code signing, then Android's time just isn't here yet.
The software just doesn't matter until we have the hardware and (and non-hostile firmware!) for it to run on top of.
Re:HTC Touch Dream (Score:5, Interesting)
The T-Mobile G1 is not just US only, it's also on sale under the same name here in the United Kingdom.
Re:When will it become *our* phones? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have an openmoko freerunner running android, so IMHO that's the second android phone, though it's not on sale with android preinstalled yet, and not everything is working.
New image today - check out the Openmoko community discussion forum/mail list.
Why is it not OPEN open ? (Score:5, Interesting)
If the OS was fully open, then there would be no incentive for the network to buy the phone and subsidize the price - i.e. if you want a truly open phone - you'll get it but at a price.
Shameless plug: I've got both the iphone sdk and the android sdk - I find the google sdk 20x easier to get stuff done and the marketplace puts your apps up *instantly* (upgrades and all). However, the marketplace is suffering from kids abusing the comment capability but when that's nailed (and of course the ability to actually charge for apps) I think we will see very high quality apps coming out for the google phone. Or at least I hope so - I'm writing a game in progress which I hope to earn a bit of cash. (Even more shameless plug : http://www.barcodebeasties.com/ [barcodebeasties.com] )
I just want an android device, not a smartphone (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't really need or want an iPhone or an Android phone. What I want is a nice, compact, multi-touch platform like the iPod Touch that runs android. Android has the potential to power a real iPod killer that's a nice platform for all kinds of apps.
Initially I was very excited about the iPod Touch and bought one. But Apple's desire to completely and utterly control what I do with my own device has really turned me off of it. If I could have a similar device that was open to installation of apps and development without deferring to the whims of Google or any other manufacturer, I'd gladly shell out another $300 for an android device sans phone. Seems like manufactures aren't even bothering to compete with Apple in general (maybe android isn't good enough to compete with the iPhone and iPod touch), but rather are aiming for the already existing market of mediocre products such as blackberry, palm, and windows smartphones. Kind of sad, really. In this market things like video and audio playback seem almost like afterthoughts, which poorly designed apps to do this and little to no support for integrating with PC-based software, such as would be similar to iTunes. Sure you can dump songs on a little chip, but how well does the playback system work? is it fully integrated like it is on the iPhone and obviously the iPod Touch? How well can it integrate with Amarok or Songbird? Seems like there are a lot of opportunities here. Of course maybe they feel the mp3 player market is so saturated that it doesn't matter. After all business users care mainly about their e-mail. I get the impression I will never be in the target market for any of these companies.
Re:I just want an android device, not a smartphone (Score:4, Interesting)
"I'd gladly shell out another $300 for an android device sans phone."
Android can successfully be run on the Nokia N810, An internet tablet with WiFi (and there's a WiMAX version too).
Maybe a little more than $300, but as a foreigner I don't know how to access google US to do a shopping search.
Display resoultion (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:meh... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:HTC Touch Dream (Score:5, Interesting)
The phone you speak of is sold in the US under contract or at ridiculous retail prices without contract. This phone is unique as it's one of the few phones with excellent functionality that can be purchased at a reasonable cost without a contract.
Most consumers actually like getting their phones at very low subsidized cost through their wireless carrier but I'm a firm believer this has an astoundingly negative impact on competition. The wireless carriers dictate to the device manufacturers which features are allowed.
Separating phone functionality from the control of the carriers will TREMENDOUSLY improve competition and have a very beneficial impact on end users. I'm a little surprised the FTC hasn't stepped in already on behalf of consumers. Wireless plans in the US have gone up dramatically in cost over the last 15 years. The phone companies like to quote cost:minute rates because it makes them look cheaper. The fact is, the cost of text messaging has gone UP and data transfer rates are still prohibitive for most end users to really use the full capacity of their phones.
Re:I just want an android device, not a smartphone (Score:1, Interesting)
I think you would be surprised by the flexibility and well-designed-ness of the G1. Although it doesn't support multitouch, the platform is generally well designed. Media support runs well (I would say as well as the iPhone), and although there's no amarok/songbird integration, banshee's latest version will support full android integration. Don't get too down on the platform yet, good stuff is coming...
Re:Different hardware spec to the G1 (Score:3, Interesting)
Android applications, if properly made, are pretty screen-agnostic. The UI layout code is designed to heavily emphasize relative placement rather than absolute. Hell, even on the G1 you need a little leeway because of the way everything changes size when you flip the screen orientation.
Overall, only the very laziest developers should have to do any significant patching, if any at all.
Re:I just want an android device, not a smartphone (Score:5, Interesting)
The N810 already runs Linux with a Nokia UI. There's no reason to install Android.
In addition, Nokia has been shipping phones that let you install anything you want for years, and their phone OS will become open source as of next year. They even provide native Python interpreters.
The main reason Nokia is so unpopular in the US is that they refused to cripple their phones as much as the carriers wanted. Unfortunately even nerds in America are apparently too dependent on force fed advertising.
Re:HTC Touch Dream (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:When will it become *our* phones? (Score:3, Interesting)
I have the N810 (ok, not actually a phone, but same line) and it runs maemo (debian derivative) by default. I have full root access, can SSH into it remotely, do rDesktop, add custom repositories, install deb files, etc. Basically it's a linux computer that fits in your pocket!
Re:When will it become *our* phones? (Score:4, Interesting)
If you're referring to the ability to replace the firmware, that is definitely a disappointment. However, that's between HTC and T-Mobile. With Android published under the Apache License 2.0, there's not much anyone can do to force HTC and T-Mobile to allow self-signed firmware. My hope, though, is that some of these non-carrier devices, like the one cited in the OP, will allow replacement firmware. Only time will tell.
Thanks for the shout-out!
On the apps front, I suspect part of the hang-up is that the Android Market — the closest counterpart to the iPhone App Store — is only supporting free apps right now. Vendors interested in turning a buck (or yen or euro or whatever) either need to use one of the other markets or wait for the Android Market to start supporting paid-for apps. That's reputedly coming in Q1.
Even given that, the Android Market has a fair number of apps there. I don't remember the release rates for the iPhone apps when its SDK was released, but I'd be a bit surprised if Android is dramatically off the pace. Yes, many of the apps are trivial (umpteen tip calculators, flashlights, etc.), but it's not like every iPhone or WinMo app is a blockbuster. Considering hardware has been available for 5-6 weeks, I'm relatively pleased with the response to date, for what my opinion is worth.
note the increased processor speed (Score:3, Interesting)
up to 624MHz from 528MHz. Seems like a useful jump.
Re:Different hardware spec to the G1 (Score:3, Interesting)
Have you done much development with the Android API and actually used the phones? I have a hard time thinking of any program you'd be making on a mobile phone that wouldn't be able to easily scale by 100 pixels one way or another. Certainly nothing I have on my G1 would qualify as such. And having played around making some apps with the API, it really encourages you to design in a way that scales transparently to different screen sizes.
I'm curious what sort of program you're envisioning that has to cram so much into a non-scrollable area that it couldn't reasonably be resized.
Re:Different hardware spec to the G1 (Score:3, Interesting)
I've developed two successful apps. One somewhat successful, one very successful. The most successful one is the most resolution independent. In coding it, I've done nothing that depends on any particular resolution. It randomly crashes in the emulator using QVGA (the resolution of the Aussie google phone). Even if it didn't crash, several of the screens are next to useless in the lower resolution, there is simply not enough space without recoding them.
Now, I could recode my app to use smaller fonts, lower the width/height of the UI components - but it would make my app less useful on the G1. Why would I want to do such a thing?
Re:Warning - design is not final yet (Score:3, Interesting)
Well it's a freight shipment from China, which are notoriously late. Unless you own all the product on the ship (think apple at a major product launch like the iPhone, new iMac, etc), you're screwed, especially if you're using a budget carrier which he undoubtedly is. Jan 29th means he was told "last week in January" which means "third week of february". Depending on how badly he's pissed off samsung for lifting the curtian behind the wizard of oz on how LCD manufacturing works, they may pull some strings to get it caught up in customs for a few weeks and make him sweat it out.
Re:When will it become *our* phones? (Score:3, Interesting)
I am an app developer (mobile included). I have developed a couple of apps for the Android platform just to test the SDK. It works pretty well, but lacks some dialogs which are standard on desktop OS's (color picker, file save/open dialogs). All of that is kind of offloaded to the developer. It has *A LOT* of great potential to extend every part of the OS's interface. I am far more excited for Android than iPhone since iPhone really restricts what you can do with it. Hell you can't even have an app run in the background. How dumb is that?
Android won't compete with iPhone as much at first simply because there isn't enough marketing. But it will catch up and then some once more power apps (free even, gasp) show up. As far as the G1 goes, its a pretty nice phone, but making it T-Mobile only in the US was not very smart. T-Mobile has very little 3G support throughout the US. Nothing against T-Mobile really, its just young in that respect.