Maybe T-Mobile wasn’t sleeping this whole time

Walking to the train tonight it suddenly hit me how awesome T-Mobile’s network announcement (Full HSPA+) was today.  It’s unclear how long they knew the Nexus One was coming, but clearly they knew enough and had enough lead time to pump out the upgrades for launch day.  Doing so takes the network issue  largely off the table.  By partnering with Google, they were able to ride the wave into what will hopefully be the start to how consumers consider their mobile purchase.  AT&T … not quite so fast.

Google has confirmed that Nexus One, and all subsequent Google phones sold via the company’s online store, will be available unlocked for use on every participating carrier. If a particular Google-branded phone is not on a particular carrier, then that’s only because that phone doesn’t have the proper radio to support its network. In addition to being unlocked, the phones will also have bundled plan options where the pricing and details are up to the carrier.

By offering a lineup of phones that is essentially carrier-independent (with the radio compatibility caveat), Google has separated the two previously interlocked parts of the phone/plan-buying experience—phone selection and carrier selection—and has done so in a way that threatens one of the most important enablers of carrier lock-in.

In short, what Google announced today wasn’t just the Nexus One, but the world’s first carrier-independent smartphone store; the Google store is now the only smartphone store in the world where, for every phone on offer, you first pick which phone you want, and then you pick a network and a plan on that network. So you can comparison shop among networks based purely on plan price and network quality, because you already have your phone picked out. via Ars Technica

I’m intrigued by the Nexus One, but not buying anytime soon. I definitely like where Android is going and have a good deal of respect for what Google is trying to do. I’m just not compelled enough to pick up a second mobile bill (@ $80/mo+tax) especially since while the G phones run on GSM, it’s another network band meaning sadly I still do need to consider where I want my 3G.

What about the Google Phone is Going to matter?

Take a peek on Techmeme and you might think the only story in tech news is the upcoming and likely release of a Google Phone.  I’m sure it will be decent enough but am starting to question the logic a bit given the rumor that the Nexus One as it seems to be called will be sold as an open device, yet on T-Mobile.

I’m definitely a fan of open.  I absolutely prefer that my mobile devices not have restrictions based on operator business development initiatives and instead offer all that the hardware and OS can deliver.  I just don’t see how this device is going to really make that much of a difference for the mainstream consumer – or for T-Mobile.  According to the FCC leak the supported bands will be global and specifically TMO’s (1700) in the US.

If T-Mobile sells and supports the device it will really be a T-Mobile device.  Even if you buy it elsewhere you will need to run it on T-Mobile (again in the US) to actually take advantage of the 3G services and why would you buy an advanced smartphone otherwise?

I would love to be a fly on the way at Verizon Wireless right now.  They just spent gobs of cash launching the Droid which is strongly co-branded Google and has little to no Verizon anywhere.  Maybe they jumped the gun on going for Droid so quickly when big G had this cooking (to compete) all along …

I’m wondering whether Google might be looking to upend the subsidy market by  taking on the cost directly in exchange for all the lovely data they track … assuming a Google phone is like the G1 in that you must have a Google Account for it to work.  I tend to agree with Ewan that this really is going to be a price play.  It’s unlikely that this will be the phone for me, and I do wonder who an open Android device is for just now … Looking forward to seeing how this all plays out.

A Mobile Challenge!

Calling all mobile device manufacturer’s, carriers and anyone else who wants to play!

This is your chance to prove just how reliable your high end devices are!  I’m tired of seeing low battery warnings on my mobile devices before the end of a business day and am looking to you to prove me wrong — that there is actually at least one power device that can handle this seemingly simple task.  My normal usage is probably more aggressive than the average consumer and I’m looking to find the most robust smartphone on the market.

Here’s what you can expect your devices to have to survive …

  • I wake each day around 5am using the phone as an alarm.  It is then, that I unplug and really begin my day on battery.  I’ll check email from multiple accounts, take a peak at the weather, twitter and facebook.
  • I typically then work out and use my mobile for music.  I’m open to tracking the workout as well via whatever app you recommend, but typically use my Garmin to capture sports telemetry.  Post workout it’s back to check in with my various feeds as above and then off to the train …
  • On the train is where your device is going to experience some heavy usage and my commute is 90 minutes total in both directions.  The train itself is an hour and during that time, you expect the following type of usage: email (mulitiple accounts), twitter, facebook, extensive web usage (mainly google reader), ebooks and multimedia (music mainly).  I’ll probably check in on foursquare at both ends as well … I’m usually at the office by 9 though sometimes later like today.
  • During  the course of my business day I make a few calls, stay on track of upcoming meetings (exchange sync), and check-in occasionally with Foursquare (lunch), twitter, facebook and google reader.  Much of my information flow switches to the desktop during the day, but as I move between meetings mobile usage does come into play.
  • I’ll probably snap some pictures and upload them to various services as well … just part of a normal day.
  • The return commute is much like the morning.  I tend to take a train anytime between 6 and 8pm so your device needs to be able to last until 9pm.

In my experience the only device that has come close is the Nokia E71.  The iPhone 3GS ranks among the worst performers … requiring multiple top-ups throughout the day.  Other failed devices are the Nokia N80 and T-Mobile G1.

Here are the basic rules:

  • I’m happy to use my SIM card, but only have a personal account on AT&T so if you want to submit a device to this test, I’m requesting that you cover the data and call plan during the trial.
  • All devices must have 3G service in NYC.
  • All devices must fit into the “smartphone” category.
  • I’d like to test all devices submitted over a few days to understand what’s normal and to make sure they all get a fair shake.
  • All devices will be loaner.  I’m not looking to take your phones … just test them.
  • There’s no prize other than bragging rights.  I’m an individual not a company and can’t offer anything other than that.

If you are interested in participating, please leave a comment with an email in the contact field so I can reach out with an address to send things.  If you have any questions, please also leave a comment so others can benefit from the shared knowledge.

I’d like to test a good range of products, but what gets put into the ring will be up to you … I expect this to take a few weeks if all goes as planned and hope it’s fun for everyone.

Let’s get it on!

T-Mobile G1 is an almost …

T-Mobile G1

I’ve been playing with the T-Mobile G1for a few days now and I’d say it’s definitely a mixed bag. The form factor is interesting and the screen is gorgeous. As noted last week, the initial user experience is hands down the ultimate experience I’ve seen yet on any platform. With a simple login to Google, you have access to all your data – awesome! Actually using the G1 though afterwards is considerably less awesome…

The first thing I noticed using the G1 is that you have to constantly use both the touch screen and the hardware keys. There’s no way to do it all from one or the other and that’s both frustrating and confusing. There’s NO text entry in portrait mode which means this is a two-hander in almost every use case and something I hate. No easy way to tap back a tweet, sms or any form of text. You can dial in portrait mode, but there’s no T9 mapped to the keys – or a virtual keyboard. I know this is coming in Cupcake, but this is a huge miss.

Typing on the keyboard takes getting used to like on all devices. Because of the hump on the right side, I actually find typing to be less comfortable than on other devices because I’m always moving my hand to get comfortable and this is slowing me down – way too much.

The trackball is both a strength and a weakness. Cruising through a web page or a list it’s great, but when you are actually trying to click on a small link it’s way too sensitive. I’ve honestly not looked to see if this can be adjusted yet, but imagine your mouse is operating at hyper-speed on a tiny screen and you ‘ll get the idea of what it can be like to use.

In general the UI is nice to look at but harder to use than you’d expect. There are a lot of ways to access things from the on-screen buttons to the menu key as well as the back and home buttons and unfortunately you need to know when to invoke what option. The only truly simple thing is that the green button calls up your dialer and the red key turns the screen off.

The Camera is pretty average. No flash, 3MP = poor indoor shooting. The shutter is mushy and I found the lag to be considerable. Typical for a phone actually though even the iPhone’s on-screen button snaps faster than this. Neither can compare to a several year old Nokia NSeries though …

The browser is very solid. Much faster on wifi than anything else – which brings up a related point on TMO here. The coverage in NYC is pretty good though not stellar but you lose ALL signal on the train platform’s at Grand Central and there’s little to no signal on Metro North making any T-Mobile device useless for the commute. Anyway the browser is as good as the iPhone in my book. There’s no flash support, but you can easily manage multiple tabs and moving between them is quite nice given the tile management system in Android. There’s no sync for bookmarks though so you’ll be adding what you want as you go here which is a definite hole that should be filled.

Playing with the Market / App Store (whatever the actual name is) has been pretty positive and I’ve seen how well integrated people are able to write applications. The store itself is nowhere as simple as the iPhone store, but certainly not hard to figure out and there’s a nice diversity of applications in each category. I can’t speak to the quality of things in general but the apps I’ve tried are all quite good. So far, I’ve tried and am using Accuweather (killer GPS integration), Truphone, Bonsai Blast, Compare Everywhere, Connect 4 and Tic Tac Toe (for Hannah who’s 5), fBook, Last.fm, My Maps Editor, PixelPipe, Pac-Man, Shazam, TuneWiki, and Twitdroid

I love how the notification system coordinates throughout the system! New apps installed, emails, tweets, sms messages … all come through the menu bar and you are able to switch modes to engage with the latest info that’s poured in. I cannot state how powerful this concept is enough. Looks like Palm is actually doing something similar in WebOS for the Pre though on the bottom… should be interesting to compare in a few months.

All of the potential power within the G1 is rendered useless within a few short hours of light use by it’s absolute crap battery. T-Mobile and Google should be ashamed for releasing such a power hog! I found that just be leaving email and Twitdroid on, the phone was dead by around 3pm – taken off power at 7 am when I left for work. In that time, I did some light browsing over cellular and perhaps 30 minutes of wi-fi use at the office. That’s awfully quick and I’m guessing I could actually kill the battery before lunch with heavy (more normal for me) use.

The G1 is a solid first effort but I would not recommend it to anyone other than a mobile geek looking to explore. I think the average person would have a lot to get used to which is certainly true of most devices, but the mass market simplicity you should expect to find today is just not there yet … and of course the battery issue.

T-Zones needs to be taken out back and shot

I have two active phones – A Nokia E71 running on an ATT SIM and an N96 running on a T-Mobile SIM. Because the T-Mobile SIM was initially provisioned for Blackberry service it seems to only have access to the T-zones access point which absolutely sucks. For starters, you can only have two simultaneous connections which means a multi-tasking device like the N96 (or any other N or E Series) bumps into this limit REGULARLY. In ordr to proceed past the warning about reaching the maximum number of connections, you must first request that an “offending application” stop doing what it was doing in order to try again in your current app. I would not be exaggerating to say I see this within 2 minutes of active use and continuously thereafter. WTF?!?!?! I never noticed this when the SIM was in the Blackberry and I’m guessing that because you pay such a premium for Blackberry data service it does not count against the two connections. Additionally the Blackberry really does not actively multi-task so it’s quite difficult to get two things competing to connect on the access point.

I’m aware this should be resolved with a change to my service agreement, but am unable to make those changes myself as the SIM and device are part of corporate plan. Regardless T-Zones is really a poor excuse for a data plan access point. People are using more not less. The limit should be the volume of data, not the way in which you connect.

Hands On with the G1

I spent some time with the G1 over the weekend and am still a bit underwhelmed. Overall the OS seems very polished compared and compared to my experimental install on the Nokia N810 it’s night and day. Still my view is that Android is far more designed for the power user rather than the mainstream mobile consumer. The user experience will definitely take some getting used to and finding the right way to navigate through screens is something you have to learn rather than simply intuit. T-Mobile has only added myFavs to the OS leaving it to appear otherwise native which is definitely refreshing

The hardware is quite nice. I found the G1 much smaller than I expected actually from the initial photos. It was very comfortable in-hand and the keyboard did not seem too hard to get used to using. I spent less than 15 minutes with the device so this is really a very casual perspective. The screen was very bright and in general the system looks beautiful. There’s a slickness that’s hard to get a feel for without some hands on experience. The manner in which the screen slides out is very slick as well. The arm inside articulates around so the screen pseudo-rotates rather than simply sliding up. When it’s open there’s a very nice click as it settles into position.

I’ve heard one rather interesting detail as well which is that TMO will only have a small window of exclusivity with Android which is pretty disappointing considering how long they waited on 3G. My money’s definitely on other carrier or open Android devices over the G1. I’d expect to see quite a few new Android mobile devices around CES and in market around the same time if not right after.