Turns out Wozniak didn’t have to wait for Google’s new Nexus One phone. Google exec Andy Rubin, a longtime friend, gave him one. And that’s how Google got an unexpected plug.

“I was impressed right away,” Wozniak said.

The Apple co-founder praising Google’s bold gambit to compete with Apple got the blogs buzzing. Wozniak first confessed his feelings to a local NBC affiliate a few weeks ago. Asked what his current favorite gadget is, Wozniak told host Jessica Aguirre: “The latest one. It’s a non-Apple product. It’s one that just came out yesterday.”

So Wozniak had to quickly clarify that he had not bolted from the iPhone. He, in fact, carries two at all times. The self-proclaimed gadget freak says he fields so many questions about mobile phones that he tests them all, even the BlackBerry, which he made his primary phone for four months just to learn what a BlackBerry user “knows and does and uses.” He estimates that he has owned about 100 mobile phones over the last two decades.

“I’ve got six phones on me right now,” he said. “Of the six, three are very good phones: the iPhone, the [Motorola] Droid and the Nexus One.”

Read the full story on LA Times.

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Here is why Cody Willard thinks Google’s gonna kill the Nexus One and their entire cell phone sales business sometime this year or next:
1. Retailing hardware isn’t what business Google is in.
2. They don’t wanna compete against their partners.
3. Google’s damaging its brand name.
4. The Nexus One is a stupid name anyway.
5. The cell phone business will hurt Google’s gross margins.

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• Google Nexus One: Growing pains or meltdown? (dvice.com)

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According to mobile analytics firm Flurry,Google’s Nexus One phone sold a mere 20,000 units in its first week in the market.

The Flurry report goes on to compare the Nexus One launch with other smartphones, including the Motorola Droid, which sold 250,000 units in its first week. In its comparison to the iPhone 3GS launch, however, the report is a bitdisingenuous. The iPhone 3GS was an update to an existing & wildly popular product, not a completely new product launch. In that light, the 1.6 million iPhones sold in the first week of the 3GS launch, while indeed 80 times the number of Nexus One sales, aren’t a true apples-to-Apple comparison.

Instead, a better comparison may be to sales of the original iPhone. According to Apple’s Q3 2007 results, released on 25 July 2007, the iPhone sold 270,000 units during the quarter. The original iPhone was released nearly a month earlier, on June 29. That works out to around 10,000 original iPhones sold per dayfollowing its 2007 release, which dovetails nicely with an early 2008 analysis of iPhone sales from Ars Technica. Far from the flabbergasting sales lead of the 3GS, the original iPhone sold about 3.5 times as many units in its 2007 launch as Nexus One did in 2010; also, the original iPhone sold for a hefty $599, even with an AT&T contract, while the Nexus One is $179 with a new T-Mobile contract ($529 without).

Read the full story on TUAW

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It’s a nice phone. OK, it’s a very nice phone.
But nothing about the new Nexus One smartphone from Google Inc. comes close to warranting the mass hysteria that attended its unveiling last week.
The Nexus One isn’t revolutionary. Nor is it an iPhone killer — a phrase we should banish to the Tech Writers’ Hall of Cliches. It is, instead, a sleek phone with some advancements in display and processor technology that will surely be matched and then overtaken by others in the months ahead.
True, the rapidly evolving competition among Google, Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Research in Motion Ltd. is fascinating to watch. And Google’s plunge into e-tailing — the Nexus One can only be bought directly from the company over the Web — has the potential to shake up how phones are sold.
Me, though, I find it hard to swoon over a business model.
The Nexus One, manufactured by Taiwan’s HTC Corp. to Google’s specifications, is similar in both size and shape to the iPhone — a smidge thinner and lighter, a trifle longer. It runs a new version of Google’s Android operating system that makes modest tweaks to the software that debuted on Motorola Inc.’s Droid two months ago.

T-Mobile

At launch, there isn’t much of a choice: The only carrier currently offering a plan is T-Mobile USA, the U.S. mobile-phone division of Deutsche Telekom AG, which charges $79.99 per month. In theory, you can also use a SIM card from AT&T Inc., but the phone wouldn’t be able to use AT&T’s 3G network for data, only its older, slower Edge network. Outside the U.S., Google is shipping the unlocked Nexus One to the U.K., Hong Kong and Singapore.
The choices will multiply over time. This spring will see a Nexus One that runs on the Verizon Wireless network, which uses a different technology than AT&T and T-Mobile. Also in the spring, Vodafone Group Plc is lined up to offer a service plan for the Nexus One in Europe.
Google is responsible for delivering the phone — the one I ordered on launch day last week arrived in less than 48 hours — and will be the first point of contact if anything goes wrong.
Weakening the carriers’ control and compelling them to compete with each other may eventually put more power into consumers’ hands — and, of course, Google’s.
While all this is interesting, it’s hardly earth- shattering. When Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, it changed the entire way people thought about wireless devices, ushering in the era of the mobile Web.
The Nexus One? It’s just a very nice phone.

Read the full story on BusinessWeek

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ABC News has published this doomsday piece by Michael S. Malone, who notes that while Google’s Nexus One device is getting a lot of buzz, it won’t rightfully challenge Apple’s iPhone hegemony.

Google is expected to unveil the device Jan. 5 at an Android press event at the company’s Mountain View, Calif., Googleplex. We know the device is made by HTC, runs Android 2.1 and is super fast, with a Motorola Droid-like big touchscreen.

Documents indicate Google will sell the phone online for $529.99 unlocked or $179.99 through T-Mobile with a two-year contract.

Read the full story on eWeek.

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• Google Nexus phone to debut Tuesday? (cnn.com)

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Since the Google phone will be a GSM device, it’s going to be able to work in the vast majority of carriers worldwide. However, that doesn’t mean most countries will be able to order the Nexus One or buy it carrier-subsidized. The Guardian has just reported that Google has approached several operators in the UK. They’ve been chatting up both T-Mobile and Vodafone in order to gauge interest for carrying the Nexus One ahead of the new iPhone’s launch in Britain.
This is far from confirmation of UK availability, but it’s the only news we’ve got on any foreign carriers handling the Nexus One. Hopefully we’ll start to hear more news from carriers in other countries soon.

Source: I4U

Google, GSM, IPhone, Nexus One, Smartphone, T-Mobile, The Guardian, Vodafone

(Free-Press-Release.com) December 17, 2009 –
Google said in a corporate blog on Saturday that it has developed a phone based on its Android mobile operating system and distributed it to employees to try out. Soon after, pictures of the phone surfaced on the Twitter feeds of employees and outside bloggers with details that the device would be launched next month and sold directly to consumers. The new phone would be capable of operating on any network, according to a source close to the company who was not authorized to comment publicly.
The Google phone will use what is probably the fastest smartphone chip on the planet and become the first non-Windows smartphone to tap into this kind of processing power. Conspicious among the Google phone’s leaked specifications is the Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm. Snapdragon is the first gigahertz-class ARM-based processor to be used in smartphones. (In current implementations, Snapdragon runs at 1GHz.)

This is clearly now the “flagship” Android device; it’s no longer the Motorola “Droid.” In many ways the Droid is clunky and awkward by comparison. It even appears to be faster than the iPhone 3GS.

Want to learn more about the Google Phone?
Google Nexus One is the number one site for news about the Google Android Phone – Nexus One.

Press Release here.

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More details have emerged regarding the upcoming Google phone called Nexus One. Tnkgrl Mobile who has had a hands on with the device has confirmed that Nexus One, like Motorola Droid on Verizon wont support multitouch, out of the box. Not atleast in the two apps (Browser and Google Maps) that she tried out.

Due to some agreement, she was not allowed to capture video or picture of the phone, but she has confirmed the following hardware specs of the unit she tested.

• Nexus One is extremely thin, thinner than Droid and iPhone 3GS.
• Comes with 4GB microSD card as pre-installed.
• Battery capacity is 1400 mAh
• Capacitive OLED screen with almost the same size and resolution as the Motorola Droid.
• 3G will work only on T-Mobile USA. No 3G on AT&T (EDGE only).
• It is unlocked. You can use it with any carrier you like.
• It appears to work faster than Motorola Droid.
• No multitouch in Browser and Maps.
• No dedicated physical key for camera.
• The trackball works almost exactly similar to other HTC phones like HTC Hero.
• 5 MP camera is on board. The performance of camera is decent in low light, but the flash is weak.
• It uses micro USB connector for both data and power.

Read the full story on Redmond Pie

AT&T, Google, Google Maps, HTC Hero, IPhone, MicroSD, T-Mobile, Verizon

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land, and he had the Google Phone. Here are some of his thoughts from his blog post:

• It looked to me like a thinner Droid Eris with a larger, more impressive screen (both are made by HTC; Nexus One has no “Sense” interface)
• The screen resolution was great and crisp
• The stand-out dimension of the phone in my brief time with it was its speed; it was extremely fast (running on the T-Mobile network)
• It features the “new” version of the Android Market, which is a considerable step up from what exists now

This is clearly now the “flagship” Android device; it’s no longer the Motorola “Droid.” In many ways the Droid is clunky and awkward by comparison.

It appears to be faster than the iPhone 3GS but I didn’t have any side-by-side comparison opportunity. It has multi-tasking and Google Navigation, Voice Search and so on. But the iPhone still represents a more “complete” and “integrated” device in my view. Others will probably disagree. Indeed, this is probably the first Android device that is a true substitute for the iPhone. That represents danger for Apple unless it comes out from under the AT&T relationship next year; Android could blunt iPhone sales.

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• Nexus One Google Phone Could Arrive on T-Mobile January 5th [Googe] (gizmodo.com)

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The clever folks at These Are The Droids have analyzed the Android 2.1 ROM for the Nexus One and discovered specs for the Nexus One, including a proximity and ambient light sensor, an accelerometer, a magnetic compass, WiFi, a stereo FM speaker, a noise-cancellation chipset, OpenGL ES 2.0-capable graphics, and references to an auto-focus camera with LED flash. These are Droids also notes that the ROM 2.1 hints at a Snapdragon processorinside.

The Snapdragon is capable of clock speeds that top 1GHz–nearly double the processor speed ofMotorola’s DROID. The OpenGL ES 2.0 support should also satisfy gamers, and put the Nexus One on par with the iPhone in terms of graphical power.

Another interesting feature is the purported FM tuner which was also to be included in the Motorola Sholes Tablet specs that leaked out earlier this month (here’s hoping we get some iPod Nano-style live radio control!). These Are Droids also reports that the Nexus One will have an 802.11n chipset (most smart phones currently support 802.11g); WiFi N may be overkill for this little machine, but at least it will be able to fit nicely into a dedicated Wireless-N environment.

Source: PC World

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