Mountain View, California — Directly targeting at Apple’s iPhone, Google on Tuesday unveiled its HTC-built “Nexus One” smartphone, displaying many of its features during a press event, saying the name connotes convergence with its partners, as well as opened an online store to sell the device unlocked to consumers who wish to purchase it for $529, or for $179 plus a two-year contract from T-Mobile.
Under the symbolic banner of Web Meets Phone, Google on Tuesday with a big crowd of media representatives announced its long-awaited direct entry into the smartphone market with its Nexus One, a challenge to the many devices using its Android mobile platform.
The Nexus One smartphone…
The Nexus One operates via an updated version of Google’s Android operating system. Developed by HTC from Google’s direct specifications, it touts a touch-screen and a fast processor. Some of its impressive features includes: speech dictation, which allows you to speak and compose e-mail messages, Twitter tweets and Facebook posts without typing. It also includes a 5-megapixel camera for video and photos, a Global Positioning System (GPS), and stereo Bluetooth connection for headphones.
Beginning today, consumers in the United States, United Kingdom, Hong Kong and Singapore can purchase the Nexus One without service, which means any GSM network SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card can be inserted into the device, or purchase the phone with service from one of Google’s operator partners via Google’s new hosted Web store.
During the gathering at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., Mario Queiroz, Google’s vice president of product management, said the Nexus One name is meant to imply a point of convergence.
“One question we asked ourselves some time ago was, what if we work even more closely with our partners to bring devices to market which are going to help us showcase quickly the great software technology we are working on here at Google?” Queiroz was quoted as saying. “We have done just that.”
Seizing the opportunity, he said a year ago, there was just 1 device with 1 carrier in 1 country using Android. Now there are 20 devices with 59 carriers in 48 countries, supporting 19 languages. There have been four major software releases in Android.
He asserts the model continues to be selectively applying engineering teams to work on products with partners. This year we will add more wireless partners and in the future will sell additional smartphones through its store to tempt users, he said.
Verizon Wireless in the United States and Vodafone in Europe will also offer the Nexus One in spring 2010, which uses the latest Android 2.1 version, a significant improvement that will broaden the reach of the smartphone that many reviewers are portraying that it most closely approximates the satisfying experience of Apple’s popular iPhone.
Google has dragged behind Apple in the mobile market. Apple commands the market and has sold nearly 30 million phones in 100 countries. It also said its iPhone and iPod Touch owners have downloaded 3 billion applications since it opened the App Store, a retail outlet for 100,000 applications that do everything from play games to translate words.
Google has been trying to be a major player with Android, which it offers free to manufacturers and wireless carriers. Around 20 Android phones are available, but few, with the exception of the Verizon Droid, have been big sellers. And there are just about 10,000 apps for Android phones.
The Nexus One could change that, says Charles Golvin, an analyst at Forrester Research: “It is the best Android to date.”
Anyway, with the shine comes shadow — Although the device is unlocked, it has limitations; it would not function with the frequency band used by the AT&T and Rogers networks for 3G data and is incompatible with CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) networks such as Verizon and Sprint.
The Nexus One operates on Android 2.1, which includes Google Maps Navigation turn-by-turn GPS. Also, the Nexus One supports Google Earth, a first among Android phones, as well as Google Voice and other standard Google Apps.
Other features include the 3.7-inch display, which matches the Motorola Droid in size. The phone is impressively thin, only 11.5 millimeters, and weighs 130 grams, far lighter than the Droid’s 170 grams. Nexus One also touts a 5-megapixel auto-focus camera with flash and geotagging. Users can take high-resolution video in the MPEG4 file format and upload it to YouTube with a single click. There are 512MB of flash memory and 512 MB of RAM, expandable to 32GB.
Users may also opt to have Google etch personal laser engravings on the device.
As for iPhone, customers must get it from AT&T Wireless, but Google’s approach with the Nexus One offers wide choices, specifically users’ ability to pick a wireless carrier, where and when Google and its partners can accommodate users.