Similar look but with Some Unique New Features
Move Over iPhone Make Room For ANDROID
The Google Android G1 is going to change the way cell phone users interact with Google's client advertisers. But are serious consumers and business people going to embrace it? One Blogger says NO!
Canada Is On Hold
It’s inevitable that Google’s Android mobile operating system will show up in Canada, at some point on some device. We don’t expect Rogers to release the G1 in Canada. It doesn’t address an underserved core market need. The current iteration of the phone lacks consumer and business functionality, relative to other smart phones, with the hope that developers will follow up the release with applications to fill in the blanks.
This first generation Google phone certainly seems rushed to market. Perhaps following Google’s philosophy of perpetual beta or ‘launch early and iterate’. This philosophy seems to serve them well when the product is free. We don’t think it plays well when the product costs $179 plus a two year service contract commitment.
Some of the more material deficiencies:
- Visually the G1 hardware is very 2006. HTC are masters of ugly utilitarian sliders. It may be superficial to some, but design is important.
- Non-standard headphone jack. Add the extra 3.5mm headphone HTC, LG, and you other cell phone manufacturers! Wake up! People like to use their existing headphones or purchase better headphones. All headphones have standard jacks. The cheap crappy non standard jack headphones you ship with phones do not cut it. Carrying an extra mini-USB adaptor with your mobile is a pain.
- Only one Google account per phone. Breaking news for you folks at Google - most people have multiple email accounts. Even multiple Gmail accounts. With the one Google account per G1 phone lock, you have handicapped your phone with your own applications relative to other smartphones.
- Contacts and Syncing. Nice attempt at trying to get us to move all of our contacts over to the Google cloud. See the previous note regarding multiple email accounts. Similarly, our contacts exist in several places for multiple reasons. Now as our contacts change on our other platforms, perhaps Outlook/Exchange at work, we need to regularly upload them to Gmail Contacts just to access them from the G-Phone. Nice and convenient not.
- No video playback except for YouTube. Not as important to us but people out there do seem to care.
- No multi-touch. The trackball and browser controls are okay but multi-touch has been public now for almost two years and it’s great.
Most customers will rightfully pass on the G1. If you are a consumer user, the iPhone is worlds ahead. If you are a business user, then RIM has a great Blackberry for you. Expect geek aspirers to choose the G1. Real geeks work on Linux Mobile devices or highly powerful Nokia N95/N96 hardware.
Not all is bad. Android seems to be a good, lightweight, and powerful mobile operating system. Given Google’s ability to fund its development and sustain it through low market share, it should continue to get even better. Within the next 18 months, we should begin to see Android on much better devices from Samsung and others.
We don’t think that Apple or RIM have to worry at this point but Android is certainly a direct threat to the Linux Mobile and Windows Mobile operating systems. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft responds. The Mobile OS space is long overdue for a shakeout.
The new G1 has a few enhancements which the iPhone does not presently have including a slide out keyboard and a Trackball.
