Well, it looks like the now slightly dated Google Ion finally has an official successor — Google has just announced that the Nexus One is its new developer phone. It apparently remains unchanged from the recently-axed consumer model, however, and Google notes that it will ship with Android 2.1 but receive Android 2.2 shortly after you turn it on. Got your developer credentials handy? Then you can log in and get your order in right now for $529.
Update: We just got a look at the specs on Google’s developer site and it looks like the Nexus One on offer is unfortunately T-Mobile only. Check out the tell-tale bands for yourself after the break.
Update 2: The specs mention that the device has “no root access” and that the bootloader is locked, but we’re taking this to mean it’s no different from any other Nexus One you’d buy. More ominously, though, it says that fastboot isn’t enabled, which leads us to wonder whether this is going to cause problems with bootloader unlocks in the field. Let’s keep our fingers crossed. Thanks, Carson!
DARPA has long been working on making real-time translation systems practical and portable, and it looks like it’s now closer than ever to its goal — although it can’t necessarily take all the credit. The research agency recently teamed up with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (or NIST) to test three different systems as part of its TRANSTAC project, at least one of which relies on none other than a Nexus One to do real-time, spoken language translation from Pashto to English, and vice versa. Of course, specific details on the translation systems are otherwise a bit hard to come by, but NIST is more than happy to draw a few Star Trek comparisons in its demonstration video — check it out after the break.
Your average satellite these days is roughly on par in terms of size with your average living room, give or take, and so naturally the cost of lofting one into orbit is, if you’ll pardon the phrase, sky high. Despite that, many offer less processing power a mobile processor like Snapdragon. The obvious solution? Chuck a smartphone into orbit and revel in the savings. That’s the idea behind the PhoneSat, helped along by the Mavericks Civilian Space Foundation, which strapped a Nexus One into a rocket with 1,000lbs of thrust and threw it up to 28,000 feet to see how it copes with the immense stress of riding into space. Of course, 28,000 feet isn’t quite space (NASA would have run out of astronaut badges long ago), but the G-forces and temperature cycles felt during this short trip are comparable to a one-way voyage to orbit. The first such launch didn’t go so well, with the rocket suffering a ballistic return — coming in like a projectile without a ‘chute. The shattered remains of that are shown above. But, the second flight was rather more successful, and the video results can be seen below — captured by the phone itself.
Update: Matt Reyes, one of the folks behind the launch, wrote in to let us know of another article here on the project, including more details on the history of the team and the various hardware beyond the N1 payload. Matt, along with project members Chris Boshuizen and Will Marshall, are NASA engineers, helped by Ryan Hickman at Google, which probably helps to explain how they were able to get from the photo above to the successful launch below in just one iteration.
HTC’s Evo 4G phone will become the first device (after Google’s Nexus One) to get an upgrade to Android 2.2 Froyo, the latest version of the Android operating system.
Sprint will begin pushing out the upgrade to Evo users starting Tuesday, August 3. All Evo users will have Android 2.2 by the middle of the month, says the wireless carrier.
The upgrade will offer features such as voice dialing over Bluetooth, the ability to store apps on the external memory card and browser improvements including a faster JavaScript engine and Flash support.
Sprint launched the Evo in June with version 2.1 of the Android OS. The phone has become a best seller for Sprint and HTC.
Sprint’s move is also likely to put pressure on Motorola and Verizon to get the Droid upgraded to Android 2.2 as soon as possible. Earlier reports have suggested that the Droid’s 2.2 upgrade is expected in “late summer.”
For Evo users, the upgrade will be pushed over-the-air to the device and automatically installed. Those who can’t wait will have the option to manually download it. Customers can access the update through their phone under the Settings Menu > System Updates > HTC Software Update.
Sprint says the change to the firmware will not wipe personal data such as contacts, apps, settings and photos — but it’s always a good idea to back up your device before performing a firmware upgrade, just in case.
Google’s Nexus One phone is going where few smartphones have gone before. A group strapped the Nexus One to the back of a rocket and launched it from the Nevada desert into the atmosphere to test the device’s performance up in the air.
“The purpose of flying the Nexus One is to find a low-cost satellite solution,” says Thomas Atchison, chairman of the Mavericks Foundation. “The radio, processing power, sensors and cameras in smartphones potentially have the same capability as those in satellites.”
The idea is to drive down satellite cost by using off-the-shelf products and components, says Atchison.
“Today’s satellites are the size of Greyhound buses,” he says. “But I believe they are going to get smaller and more frequently deployed. This is a first-step effort.”
The Nexus One piggybacked on a rocket that was being launched alongside another one for a project called Clotho that’s trying to find out how far off the earth’s surface life exists.
The test flight with the Nexus One was to see how the device behaves under a high-G environment, says Atchison.
“If you put a Nexus One in orbit, how will it perform?” he says. “How does the device handle the thermal temperature and vibrations. We wanted to see the results.”
The resulting video from the Nexus One is below. As expected, the video is a lot of shaking, blue sky and blobs of light, but it is still fun to watch. An earlier test brought Nexus One back with a shattered screen but the device did well on its second flight.
Mavericks researchers James Dougherty and Robert Briody show the payload with a biosampling module and the Google phone.
Smartphone maker HTC is switching back to older LCD technology for some of its smartphones because of a shortage of active-matrix OLED displays.
The new crop of HTC phones coming this summer will include a technology called SLCD, or Super LCD, instead of the newer organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays used in several current-model smartphones, including the HTC Desire and the Google-designed, HTC-built Nexus One.
HTC says SLCD will give consumers a visual experience comparable to HTC’s current 3.7-inch OLED displays. SLCDs will also offer better battery performance, contrast and more-natural balanced color than AMOLED (Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode) displays, says the company.
“HTC is experiencing high demand for many of our phones, specifically our phones with 3.7-inch displays,” Peter Chou, CEO of HTC said in a press release. “The new SLCD display technology enables us to ramp up our production capabilities quickly to meet the high demand.”
But just what exactly is Super LCD technology? Two analysts Wired.com spoke with say it may just be a marketing jargon for a variant of the traditional thin-film transistor liquid-crystal display (TFT-LCD) that powers almost all mobile displays currently on the market.
“There’s Super AMOLED, Super IPS and now Super LCD,” says Raymond Soneira, president of research and consulting firm DisplayMate Technologies. “Its like eggs in a supermarket: You can’t buy a small egg anymore. They all start at medium.”
When Google launched its Nexus One phone, the device’s AMOLED screen made a splash because of its vivid colors. Unlike LCDs, AMOLED screens are not backlit, which means they were expected to consume less power than traditional LCDs.
The screens are also more expensive, and their supply is limited, says Jennifer Colegrove, director at DisplaySearch.
“AMOLED is about 20 to 50 percent more expensive than LCD,” she says, “and currently only three companies — Samsung, LG and CMEL — supply it.”
Meanwhile, Samsung has developed the Super-AMOLED display to reduce some of these flaws, make the OLED screens thinner and improve on their visibility in direct sunlight. But Super-AMOLED displays are proving to be an even scarcer component for handset makers.
HTC says the SLCD technology it is using as an substitute can meet its demand without significantly sacrificing quality. SLCD is an improvement over most other LCD panels, because it provides approximately five times better power management and offers wider viewing angles, says HTC. But those claims have yet to be tested.
Details about the SLCD technology itself are scarce and further muddled by a joint venture that Samsung and Sony set up a few years ago that has the same name. In 2004, the two companies set up a joint manufacturing venture for LCD screens and called it S-LCD. The manufacturing facility initially produced LCD screens for TVs but later began focusing extensively on mobile devices. Until now, SLCD was used to refer to the name of the Samsung-Sony manufacturing plant, rather than a specific technology, says Soneira.
But if you are itching to see the differences among all the display technologies for yourself, Mobile Tech World has linked to a video comparison of Sony SLCD vs. AMOLED and Super AMOLED.
In the video, an HTC Desire phone sporting the new SLCD panel is pitted against a Nexus One with the AMOLED display, a Motorola Droid with IPS (in-plane switching, a kind of LCD technology used by many TVs as well as Apple’s iPad), and a Samsung Wave with a Super-AMOLED display.
“I thought all the displays were really good, they all had decent color and respectable viewing angles,” says a user who did the comparison on Howard-Forums.
“The super AMOLED was noticeably less reflective than the others and was blacker with the best viewing angles. Super LCD had a superior horizontal viewing angle compared to a regular AMOLED display. The AMOLED had slightly better blacks and slightly better vertical viewing angles. Both Super LCD and AMOLED were very reflective.”
Welcome back to our “worst kept secrets” hour, where HTC has seen fit to release a PR blast informing the world of what it already knew: the Desire and Nexus One are getting Super (duper) LCD displays to fill demand that Samsung’s AMOLED division cannot. Interestingly, HTC’s statement says nothing of the Droid Incredible, a close sibling to these 3.7-inch devices, but the global Nexus One and Desire are getting hooked up “later this summer.” CEO Peter Chou has also helpfully explained that the visual experience on the new SLCD screens is “comparable” to AMOLED, but offers better battery performance. Color us curious to see and hear more.
This one’s been kicking around the interwebs for a few weeks now, but it has managed to grow into something of a beast during that period. Frankly, we couldn’t think of less fitting way to send the glorious Nexus One out than to completely deface it and ruin what Google has worked so hard to perfect. But regardless of what we think, that’s exactly what has happened here. One rolle3k over at xda developers clearly has a masochistic gene or two planted inside of his skull, but at least his APK doesn’t require your N1 to be rooted before providing you access to a TouchWiz user interface. Feel free to hit the source if you’re up for seeing what you’ve been missing out on, but only if you literally cannot think of a single better thing to do with your time.
Seven months after Google launched its first phone, the HTC-designed Nexus One, it has stopped selling the devices through its online store.
“Sorry, folks…The Nexus One is no longer available for purchase directly from Google,” the company announced.
Google had warned users about this in May, saying it planned to wind down its web store.
Those who still want to buy a Nexus One will now have to go through Vodafone but that’s limited to some parts of Europe. Google promises it will make the device available to “registered developers” through a partner.
The Nexus One launched with what seemed like an innovative idea in the retailing of phones. Instead of being sold through stores, Google would directly sell it through the web to customers –something that worked for other consumer electronics products. However, the strategy didn’t resonate with consumers.
Potential customers found they couldn’t find a Nexus One in the real-world to play with, unless they knew a friend who already had the device. Google’s customer service support for the device also left many users unhappy.
Google has acknowledged that its retailing model with the Nexus One failed to catch on with consumers.
“While the global adoption of the Android platform has exceeded our expectations, the web store has not,” wrote Andy Rubin, vice-president of engineering and Android czar at Google in a blog post in May. “It’s remained a niche channel for early adopters.”
At the same time, Google tried to put the devices into retail stores in U.S. I wireless, a T-mobile affiliate, got Nexus One at its 250 stores mostly in the Midwest. So far, it hasn’t announced any other retail partnerships.
So is the Nexus One dead or is the Nexus One web retail experiment over? The answer to that will depend on whether Google will take the risk to launch a successor to the phone or if it will be content to let other handset makers take Android forward.
Google warned us that the Nexus One was approaching the end of its days, but we’ve gotta admit, we didn’t realize just how quickly that moment would come. Sure enough, Google’s official online store for the phone now just shows an ominous message that “the Nexus One is no longer available for purchase directly” from the company, which means you’re going to have to go through Vodafone, KT in South Korea, or hold out for the units that they plan on selling directly to registered developers. Needless to say, for the bulk of potential customers, the phone is all but history. So, on that note, Nexus One: for your straight-shooting stock Android ways and your unlocked radio, you’ll be dearly missed — and we hope your legacy lives on, even though your retail model does not.
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