Hasta La Gadget!

At last, the Googlephone has appeared. Forget the Droid, the G1 and all those other Android wannabees. Google will begin to sell its own reference Android 2.1 handset, designed by Google, made by hardware partner HTC, and called the Nexus One. The phone will be sold online by Google itself.

The Nexus One will, crucially, be sold unlocked, giving Google complete control over the hardware and software with no pesky carrier interference. Even the iPhone, which has had almost unprecedented autonomy in its functionality is still constrained by carriers: AT&T’s anti-tethering paranoia is a good example.

Although not yet officially announced, Google has coyly admitted that the phone is real and will be on sale early in the new year. In fact, it has provided the handset to its employees in order to test it out in the wild. The Google Mobile Blog explains, somewhat cryptically:

We recently came up with the concept of a mobile lab, which is a device that combines innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android to experiment with new mobile features and capabilities, and we shared this device with Google employees across the globe. This means they get to test out a new technology and help improve it.

Unfortunately, because dogfooding is a process exclusively for Google employees, we cannot share specific product details. We hope to share more after our dogfood diet.

The phone is already in use. Nerdy John Gruber of Daring Fireball found this user agent string in his site’s logs:

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.1; en-us; Nexus One Build/ERD56C) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/530.17

It makes sense to identify yourself as Mobile Safari, if only to get proper mobile Webkit pages served to you.

Characteristically, and in contrast to Apple’s secrecy, photos of the Googlephone are already being posted openly by Googlers, or being handed to their friends. The picture above, posted on Twitpic by blogger Cory O’Brien, shows the handset (taken on an iPhone and with a BlackBerry in the background). According to O’Brien, “Google Phone = iPhone + a little extra screen and a scroll wheel. Great touch screen, and Android.”

The hardware specs are also leaking. Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch says that the Nexus will run on Qualcomm’s speedy Snapdragon chip, sport an OLED display, be thinner than the iPhone (with no physical keyboard) and feature two microphones along with a “weirdly large” camera.

Those hoping to get an iPhone-caliber phone on Verizon are out of luck. The Nexus will be a GSM phone, which means T-Mobile and AT&T in the United States. Worse, if you do opt for AT&T, your data connection could be EDGE-only. Gruber again, from Twitter: “The bummer I’m hearing about Nexus One: it’s GSM and unlocked, but on T-Mobile’s 3G band, so it works on AT&T but EDGE-only.”

According to the Media Memo blog at the Wall Street Journal, the choice to use GSM was prompted by Verizon’s refusal to carry the Nexus. Verizon already sells the Android-based Droid, but this odd decision looks like a repeat of the one made when the carrier turned down the iPhone.

This may turn out to be a Zune-like move, where Microsoft alienated hardware makers by ignoring PlaysForSure in favor of its own new DRM scheme. Or the Nexus could be a light that burns twice as bright as all the existing confusion of Android handsets combined, thus building a brand that can rival the iPhone. Either way, we won’t have to wait for long to see. The Nexus should be on sale in early January, and if these last two days are any indication, then Googlers will have “leaked” all the hardware and software well before the launch.

An Android dogfood diet for the holidays [Google Mobile Blog]

Photo: Cory O’Brien

TechCrunch was certain that rumors of a pending honest-to-goodness Google Phone were the real deal, and now according to the site, Google employees are already tweeting with the devices in hand. If you believe what you see on Twitter, Google drones were given the HTC-designed handsets at an all-hands staff event, and the phone is quite a looker. One tweet reads “ZOMG we had fireworks and we all got the new Google phone. It’s beautiful.” while another says the phone is “Like an iPhone on beautifying steroids.” One other, non-Google user on Twitter who’s seen the device says that the device is a bit thinner than the iPhone, has a trackball (a la Hero), and has no physical keyboard… which sounds like the Bravo / Passion we’ve seen a lot of lately (and we hear is coming to the US soon). Apparently the device is running Android 2.1, is unlocked and AT&T-ready (no word on 3G status, but this could line up with our speculation about this being the carrier’s first Android phone), and will be due sometime in January. We’re guessing if that last bit is true, it will coincide with a CES announcement, but anything could happen at this point. If the device is out in the wild in such a big way, an end of the year press release wouldn’t shock us either; of course, it’s entirely possible that this is going to end up becoming the Android Dev Phone 1’s true successor or an elaborate prank on Google’s part in response to the rumors that have been building steam over the past couple weeks (they’re crafty and they have a sense of humor — it could happen). Anyhow, check out one of the tweet-tears after the break, and stay tuned for more info!

Update: Google all but confirms that devices are floating around on campus in a post on its blog:

We recently came up with the concept of a mobile lab, which is a device that combines innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android to experiment with new mobile features and capabilities, and we shared this device with Google employees across the globe. This means they get to test out a new technology and help improve it.

Not only that, but TechCrunch has more details on the device, claiming it will be a Google controlled, HTC-built model actually dubbed the “Google Phone,” and will feature a “super high resolution OLED display,” a Snapdragon CPU, a mic on the back of the phone that helps to eliminate background noise, is “really, really fast,” and most importantly, will be sold unlocked. Essentially, TC claims that the phone will function on any GSM network you throw at it — we assume that means an extremely rare pairing of both T-Mobile and AT&T 3G bands in the radio. Of course right now this is all speculation and hearsay — until we get some solid facts (and maybe a device or two on camera), don’t pull out the credit card just yet.

Update 2: Jon Gruber over at Daring Fireball says that the Google Phone is identifying itself as “Nexus One” (a Blade Runner reference) in its user agent string, though apparently Sony is calling its Android UI “Nexus” as well. Furthermore, a tweet from the man claims that he’s heard the phone sports 3G for T-Mobile only, thus seriously dashing hopes that this would play nice all over the US of A. Again, grain of salt everyone.

Continue reading Google employees given HTC-made Google Phones, January launch imminent?

Google employees given HTC-made Google Phones, January launch imminent? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 12 Dec 2009 10:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AT&T Wireless customers in San Francisco are in a froth after the network’s wireless data services went offline Friday afternoon.

Reports started appearing on Twitter with the hashtag #attfail starting around 2pm Pacific time. Customers reported having voice service and several bars of signal strength, but no internet connectivity.

Wired tests confirmed that AT&T’s internet service was out from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., and continues to be offline as of this writing. Attempts to use internet services were met with the error message, “Could not activate cellular data network.”

Visual voicemail also appeared to be unavailable, but SMS text messaging was working normally as of 5pm Pacific.

AT&T has suffered numerous intermittent connectivity problems thanks in large part to the popularity of the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS. The combination of unlimited internet plus a web-friendly phone means that people with iPhones use them for internet browsing far more than users of other smartphones do, studies have shown (and Wired.com’s traffic logs confirm). Also, some applications, such as the live video streaming built into the Major League Baseball app, use large amounts of data bandwidth. These problems have led AT&T to add capacity; the company has also recently floated the idea of providing “incentives” to limit the heaviest users.

“We are seeing a hardware issue in downtown San Francisco that is causing some degradation in service. GSM and Edge voice and data services are still accessible. Our experts are aware and working to resolve it as quickly as possible,” said Fletcher Cook, a spokesperson for AT&T.

Cook wouldn’t comment on when AT&T first noticed the problem, or when it would be fixed. “Our priority is to resolve it as quickly as possible, and then we will focus on what happened.”

UPDATE 12/14: Data service appeared to be returning to most San Francisco iPhone users by 6pm Friday, putting the outage at 3-4 hours total. Commenters here have reported that 3G wireless is still unavailable in the nearby coastal town of Pacifica (see below).

See Also:

• Wired.com’s iPhone 3G Survey Reveals Network Weaknesses
• AT&T App Invites iPhone Owners to Report Network Problems
• Network Glitches, Delays Mar iPhone 3G’s Debut
• AT&T Plans 3G Network Upgrades, 4G Rollout
• Verizon Leads, AT&T Runs Last in Wired.com’s 3G Speed Test
• AT&T: SlingPlayer for iPhone Would ‘Create Congestion’ for 3G
• AT&T Rolls out Wireless Upgrades in SF Bay Area

An AT&T executive said Wednesday that the carrier is planning to tighten data usage controls for heavy smartphone users, according to USA Today.

It’s no secret that carrier networks are fragile beasts. Thanks to AT&T’s excruciatingly slow 3G build-out and the wildly successful iPhone, it’s probably the worst off of the four carriers in this regard. But even as AT&T struggles to catch up with network upgrades, head of consumer services Ralph de la Vega told investors in New York that it’s planning “incentives” to get high-bandwidth users to cool it, the report said.

This probably has something to do with how data card subscribers (at $59.99 per month) have a 5GB cap, whereas right now smartphone users don’t. De La Vega said that just three percent of smartphone users are eating up 40 percent of available capacity, and that most of it is thanks to high-bandwidth video streaming apps.

“We need to educate the customer … We’ve got to get them to
understand what represents a megabyte of data,” de la Vega said in the report. If that’s the case, rather than blaming his customers, he should probably have a talk with Apple–which is currently featuring CNN‘s video-heavy mobile app as “Pick of the Week.”

Love that Pandora app? Well, we’ve got good news and bad news for you. The good news is that AT&T’s wireless head honcho Ralph de la Vega says it’s hard at work at improving service in San Francisco and Manhattan, where it sees especially high smartphone penetration — and coincidentally a higher concentration of whiny tech journalists. The bad news, though, is that it might end up hitting you in the pocketbook. Speaking to investors today, de la Vega mentioned that the company is well aware that downtown New Yorkers are suffering, specifically calling out the area for “performing at levels below [its] standards” expressing confidence that it’s going to get the problem resolved. In the same breath, though, he assured attendees that independent testing conducted by Global Wireless Solutions shows that a test of over 415 markets (which probably means 416 markets) has AT&T coming out on top for network speed — something that we found in our testing as well — and is “within two-tenths of 1 percent of the highest score among major providers” for dropped calls at 1.32 percent averaged nationally. Anyway, about that bad news — the company has noticed that a huge chunk (some 40 percent) of its broadband is consumed by just 3 percent of smartphone users, and it’s suggesting that it’ll “address” that through a combination of usage meters (no complaints there) and likely a tiered pricing model that sticks it to the heaviest users “in a way that’s consistent with net-neutrality and FCC regulations.” At a glance, that sounds “fair” — we’d rather they not increase data fees across the board to average out a very small number of users — but the long-lost term “unlimited” still gives us a warm fuzzy that we’re hoping to win back sooner or later. When LTE shows up, perhaps?

Ralph de la Vega promises fix for San Francisco and Manhattan coverage, plans to ‘address’ heaviest data users originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 Dec 2009 13:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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