Anyone with T-moble going to get it?
'Google phone' in stores in October
by Charlotte Raab
Tue Sep 23, 1:27 PM ET
Internet search leader Google took a giant leap into the mobile phone market on Tuesday, unveiling a handset developed with telecom carrier T-Mobile to compete with Apple's hot-selling iPhone.
The T-Mobile G1, the first mobile device powered by Google's open-source Android software, will be available in stores in the United States on October 22 and will cost 179 dollars.
Cole Brodman, T-Mobile chief technology and innovation officer, called the G1, built by the Taiwanese firm HTC, a "game-changing" device which will "power a new mobile Internet of the future."
The G1, which is a bit thicker but slightly narrower than an iPhone, will go on sale in Britain in early November and in other European countries served by T-Mobile, a subsidiary of Germany's Deutsche Telekom AG, in early 2009.
The G1 offers many of the features of the iPhone and Research in Motion's popular BlackBerry including a touch screen similar to that of the iPhone, a trackball for navigation, high-speed Internet browsing, Wi-Fi, e-mail, instant messaging and SMS texting.
It has a 3.0-megapixel camera with photo-sharing capability and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a feature lacking on the iPhone.
Internet retail giant Amazon.com announced shortly before the G1 release, in a direct challenge to Apple's iTunes, that the entire catalog of the Amazon MP3 music store would be available on the new phone.
The new phone has, unsurprisingly, been closely integrated with Google applications such as Google Maps and G-Mail and can display videos from YouTube, the video-sharing site purchased by Google in 2006.
"Google's strategy is all about broad reach for their services," said Charles Golvin, an analyst at Forrester Research. "It's just the first step in a long strategic voyage for Google."
Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner Consulting, agreed.
"Google is moving into the mobile devices market not to become yet another mobile phone manufacturer but to enable a large addressable market for its services and applications," she said.
"The G1 is the first of a series of devices that will come to market and will be optimized to offer consumers a superior experience when using Google services and applications."
Google hopes the open-source Android software powering the G1 will eventually become the dominant operating system for mobile phones and make handsets compatible with the networks of multiple carriers.
"A developer will be able to use it as a platform," said Andy Rubin, senior director of mobile platforms for Google. "A developer will be able to modify the platform and make it better."
"It's very exciting for me as a computer geek to have a phone that I can play with and modify," said Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who made a surprise appearance at the launch event.
The phone, Google's first foray into the highly compe ive mobile phone market, also will allow users to access the Android Market, where they can download software applications from developers around the world.
Google announced the formation in November 2007 of a 34-member group called the "Open Handset Alliance" to develop Android, including China Mobile, HTC, Intel, Motorola, Qualcomm, T-Mobile, Telefonica, LG and eBay.
Google's share price rose by 4.62 percent in New York to 434.76 dollars shortly after the unveiling of the G1.
I don't see how that competes with the iPhone....
hideous.
brown?
Looks like one of those "computers" they make for 4 years old
Agreed.
I'd like to see a video of this google phone, ha "Google Phone", man the name doesnt even sound sexy.
Google Phone
Goooooogle Phone
Google google google
(snap) Opps!
I would so break that thing.
It has a "centro" look about it but I'm not crazy about how it curve up at the bottom there. Is that a blackberry style rollerball at the bottom?
looks like any other phone out there.
Looks like the Zune phone...
OT
Does anybody uses the google apps for mobile phones? I use gmail, search and google maps on my Nokia S60 phones and they work really well.
You can find the apps if you point youir phone browser to http://m.google.com/
I use gmail all the time on my iPhone, as well as the search function. I've had no problem with them.
Oh, and google talk works well, too!
I've got the Gmail app on my Treo, but it slows down and crashes sometimes if I try to type e-mails. I do use the mobile apps on occasion.
poor joy of tech doesn't know pornhub.com works fine on the iPhone.
the iphone rules! no contest
Android is a good alternative for those who want more control over their purchased device without having to "jailbreak" it. The phone in these pictures is not as nice as an iPhone, but that's up to the phone manufacturers to improve.
Apple has great product design, but I would never buy an iPhone/iPod simply because they are too restrictive.
You're missing out. It only costs $100 for a developer license to write anything you want on it. Even the apps Apple doesn't want you to sell. And programming for the iPhone is EONS easier than any other mobile platform out there.
cause it forwards texts and prolly allows you to text pics?
but other then that I love my iphone...that wasnt jailbroken but rather let out on parole
It doesn't take a better phone to compete with the iPhone, I remember reading another webcomic right when the iPhone came out that showed a version of the Blackberry and an iPhone, the Blackberry did damn near everything the iPhone did and more, and did it way before the iPhone, but the iPhone is still the most popular phone on the planet, because it looks good and has a sleek interface, if you think forwarding text and texting pics will be enough to compete with the iPhone you are sadly mistaken.
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