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Predicting The Google Phone

Posted by Zonk on Wed Nov 14, 2007 02:07 PM
from the can-you-goog-me-now dept.
Cellphones Businesses Google The Internet Communications
An anonymous reader writes "Inside The GPhone: What To Expect From Google's Android Alliance (an article at Information Week) argues that you can predict what the GPhone(s) will look like very easily, simply by listing the technologies of the Open Handset Alliance partners. According to this theory, the phone will have a user interface from Sweden's TAT, VCAST-like multimedia capabilities powered by PacketVideo Corp., and an iPhone-like capacitive touch-screen, from Synaptics. Hardware-wise, it'll probably be built around Texas Instruments' OMAP processors, which enable a single-chip world phone (GSM/EDGE/GPRS). "While the GPhone won't be revolutionary, it'll connect the pieces in pleasantly new ways," argues author Alex Wolfe. Should Apple be concerned?"
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  • well (Score:2, Insightful)

    by moogied (1175879)
    It has a web browser that can play youtube..

    and its can be on sprint?

    Yes, Apple should become concerned.

    • Any Windows Mobile device (They exist for all carriers) can already do this.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by ozmanjusri (601766)
          windows mobile is not exactly "User friendly"

          Talk about understatement!

          That's like saying Cray's XT4 is not exactly pocketable...

    • Article Website (Score:5, Funny)

      by TheMeuge (645043) on Wednesday November 14 2007, @03:04PM (#21353789) Homepage
      Given the number of flash-based ads and overlays on this site, it's safe to assume that if Google can come up with a mobile platform that is capable of handling the page with TFA, they're geniuses.

  • I think I can answer that one... (Score:3, Funny)

    by tgatliff (311583) on Wednesday November 14 2007, @02:10PM (#21352969)
    No. Apple should not be concerned because they are great are doing hardware... :-)

    • Re:I think I can answer that one... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 14 2007, @02:12PM (#21352993)
      No. Apple should not be concerned because they are great are doing hardware... :-) Great are Apple doing! With you agreed I am! Hardware Apple excelling is! :-)

    • No. Apple should not be concerned because they are great are doing hardware... :-)

      I think Apple should be slightly worried. However, I think the same who will buy no mp3 player by an iPod will stick with the iPhone for the same reason: the bling factor.

      I, on the other hand, didn't want an iPhone and do want a gPhone. I don't know how much of an overlap there is between the two groups, but my guess is its smaller than you'd think at first guess.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by bkr1_2k (237627)
        I, on the other hand, didn't want an iPhone and do want a gPhone.

        My question would be why do you want something you haven't even seen yet? For all we know the thing will be a monstrosity that doesn't work well anywhere. Are you simply saying you want one because it's Google or is there reason, other than a different form of fanboyism?

        I'm not saying there's something wrong with supporting a company you like, just wondering whether there's some justification for your statement other than liking said company

        • I, on the other hand, didn't want an iPhone and do want a gPhone.

          My question would be why do you want something you haven't even seen yet? For all we know the thing will be a monstrosity that doesn't work well anywhere. Are you simply saying you want one because it's Google or is there reason, other than a different form of fanboyism?

          I'm not saying there's something wrong with supporting a company you like, just wondering whether there's some justification for your statement other than liking said company.

          You are absolutely correct, the way I stated that sounded very much like fanboyism. Let me rephrase: before the iPhone came out, I was not interested in it at all based on the hype I'd heard surrounding it. By comparison, the gPhone sounds like something that I would want based on the hype.

          Fair enough? If you're wondering, the main thing I like is the openness. Even if I wish they supported a language besides Java, it's still better than nothing.

          • Excellent response. It just seemed odd to me that it sounded like you had no other reason. I suppose I could have rightly suspected the open-initiative thing if I had bothered to consider it carefully.

            I have to agree with that, and I'm interested to see what happens, despite the fact that I'm not very likely to buy one of these phones any time soon.
        • The final products are way too far off to know, but the software demo [youtube.com] did look promising and barring any hardware SNAFU's I don't see too much they can go wrong with (that can't be fixed from within the community).
    • *sigh* This will eventually result in a new stupid meme. Apple will come out with a product, and Slashdotters will ask, "But does it run gPhone?"

  • 5 years behind apple (Score:4, Interesting)

    by backslashdot (95548) on Wednesday November 14 2007, @02:17PM (#21353057)
    According to some patents, Apple may be working on cooler stuff like pressure sensitive screens etc.

    Also, the resolution of most Open Handest/android applications are going to be for QVGA screens since that is what the SDK encourages. It will look like shrunken crap on VGA or WVGA screens, so dont expect any handset vendors to make decently priced phones above QVGA.

    So, in short, the iPhone 2 will be 4 years ahead of any Google Open Handset Alliance phone.

    -Johan

    PS> Maybe google should have made this platform good for non mobvile phone stuff too like for in cars or whatever

  • No, actually that's wrong (Score:3, Informative)

    by nilbog (732352) on Wednesday November 14 2007, @02:19PM (#21353079) Homepage Journal
    The processor used in the first Google phones will more likely be the Qualcomm 7200. This is the new chip going into the latest HTC phones (such as the AT&T Tilt/Kaiser/Tytn II/whatever). It is a dual CPU that integrates the Imageon hardware for 2d and 3d graphics acceleration. I believe this is HTC's current choice for their first "gPhone."

    Although Qualcomm hasn't released a proper SDK for the processor yet, so hardware acceleration is not fully implemented.

    • Re:No, actually that's wrong (Score:4, Informative)

      by Andy Dodd (701) <atd7@NoSpAM.cornell.edu> on Wednesday November 14 2007, @02:47PM (#21353521) Homepage
      I was about to make the same comment, for different reasons - I get the impression that it's nearly impossible to implement a UMTS phone without using a Qualcomm MSM, at least while remaining cost competitive with an MSM-based solution. TI's OMAP series are still EDGE-only.

      It's not a dual core CPU. There's a second coprocessor core that is for radio functions ONLY. It's not an SMP dual core CPU.

  • Yay! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Quiet_Desperation (858215) on Wednesday November 14 2007, @02:20PM (#21353111)
    Another cell phone! Woot! The market was so sparse!

    Maybe they can release an MP3 player next! Boo-yeah! Or a WW2 FPS game!

  • Ummm.. CDMA? (Score:3, Informative)

    by LWATCDR (28044) on Wednesday November 14 2007, @02:22PM (#21353137) Homepage Journal
    "Texas Instruments' OMAP processors, which enable a single-chip world phone (GSM/EDGE/GPRS)"
    Funny how that is a "world" phone. GSM is only a standard for Europe. In North American you have both GSM and CDMA, Korea is mostly CDMA and I think Japan is also uses a lot of CDMA.
    Also Sprint is one of the carriers that is involved in this and they only do CDMA.

    • Re:Ummm.. CDMA? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by crunzh (1082841) on Wednesday November 14 2007, @02:39PM (#21353411) Homepage
      GSM is the most used standard in the world. There are no significant country that only runs CDMA and only one that dont support GSM (Japan), even korea have gsm networks. So a world phone needs to support GSM.

    • Re:Ummm.. CDMA? (Score:5, Informative)

      by king-manic (409855) on Wednesday November 14 2007, @02:54PM (#21353627)

      "Texas Instruments' OMAP processors, which enable a single-chip world phone (GSM/EDGE/GPRS)"
      Funny how that is a "world" phone. GSM is only a standard for Europe. In North American you have both GSM and CDMA, Korea is mostly CDMA and I think Japan is also uses a lot of CDMA.
      Also Sprint is one of the carriers that is involved in this and they only do CDMA.
      GSM: All or Europe/Russia, most of Asia including china and th ephilipines, most of India, Australia, most of Africa, and most of south America
      CDMA: US, Canada, Japan, Korea.

      I think your point about GSM only being for Europe is very much wrong. GSM covers a great deal more countries then CDMA. It's a world phone because you can take a GSM phone to nearly any country with cell service and buy a sim card and get connected. With a CDMA phone coverage is sparse or non existent in anywhere but the 4 countries I listed.
    • Yes GSM isn't necessarily as heavily adopted everywhere as it is in Europe, but it is most definitely more widespread than anything else. Despite what Japan and Korea do, the rest of Asia uses GSM fairly consistently. At least China (#1 GSM market worldwide), Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Indonesia, and Thailand. India also has a growing GSM market.

      CDMA may well be a technology that is chosen as it is growing more rapidly than GSM due to 3G application apparently, but I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.
    • "World" means "At least one carrier in every area supports it", not "works with every carrier in existence".

      The U.S. supports both GSM and CDMA.
      Same for Japan - DoCoMo is GSM/UMTS. KDDI is CDMA2000 I believe. Fairly certain Softbank is also GSM, as many HTC GSM devices are rebranded by Softbank.

      I think Korea is one of the few (if only) countries that has no GSM service at all. (And they may have a GSM carrier.)

      That said - If you read TI's pages carefully, they market themselves as a manufacturer of "3G"

  • What about the Neo? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by thefekete (1080115) on Wednesday November 14 2007, @02:23PM (#21353161)
    Has any one tried running android on a Neo1973?

  • Apple's iPhone is much less significant. (Score:4, Informative)

    by radimvice (762083) on Wednesday November 14 2007, @02:23PM (#21353169) Homepage

    Apple's iPhone is a single, phone that's very well-designed and includes a slick interface. Oh yeah, and it has the Apple brand (and the corresponding price tag). Reports are that Apple's phone managed to successfully establish itself a niche in the mobile phone world, but that they failed to sell as many as they had hoped.

    Google's Android platform, on the other hand, is more than just a single gPhone, as they like to say it's 'thousands of phones', made by dozens of companies, spanning the super high-end iPhone killers to the low-end cheap free-after-rebates you get with your carrier subscription. The operations that Google has set into motion - departing from the traditional JCP standards process, releasing a new non-Sun Java-like Virtual Machine - these moves have a huge potential to transform the entire mobile phone industry as a whole - and, though it's still early to say for sure, the transformation will more than likely be for the better.

    So Apple's iPhone is a great, very well-designed product for a few people, but it is overall much less significant than the potential Android has to seriously shake up and inject innovation into the mobile industry. The two are honestly nothing alike, as much as the media would like them to be.

    -Will [ohadev.com]

    • Isn't that like arguing, in 2001, that the iPod was a single device while the PlaysForSure platform was hundreds of MP3 players made by dozens of companies spanning both the high end and low end... that ultimate got killed by the iPod Classic at the high end, the iPod nano in the middle, and iPod shuffle on the low end?

      You don't think Apple will repeat history in 2007 with the iPhone what they did in 2001 with the iPod?

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by taskiss (94652)
        No, it's like arguing that 2 birds in the bush are better than a bird in the hand.
  • Hey, I'm great at prediction. Just listen to what I say, [mcgrew.info] and the exact opposite [slashdot.org] will happen.

    I've noticed that most prognosticators are about on a par with me, or even worse. What's that meme, er, something about nothing and moving along?

    -mcgrew

  • Ad-free printer-friendly version (Score:3, Informative)

    by InvisblePinkUnicorn (1126837) on Wednesday November 14 2007, @02:31PM (#21353295)
    Ad-free printer-friendly version [informationweek.com]

  • It will most probably look like the emulator (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ishmalius (153450) on Wednesday November 14 2007, @02:32PM (#21353303)
    If you download the Android SDK, and run the emulator, you will see what the phone will almost certainly look like.
  • Am I the only one to think that the "sleek user interface" looks like Winamp pimped up by a Paris Hilton loving teenager? Not exactly a sleek user interface.

    I think that Apple has nothing to worry about in this regard.

  • Opera Mini? (Score:3, Informative)

    by feranick (858651) on Wednesday November 14 2007, @02:36PM (#21353355)
    TFA goes a long way suggesting the GPhone will sport Opera Mini as its default browser. Although it will be possible to run any piece of software (according to Sergei Brin), in its current form, the Android platform already has a quite capable browser, based on WebKit. I can't see what Opera Mini can do that it's not possible within the built in browser. I was testing it yesterday on the Android emulator and the browser is both fast and accurate in rendering. I am sure Opera will make a Gphone version, but I bet Mozilla will too. In other words, it won't matter what browser will be ported, because the user will have a great deal of choice.

    This is no iPhone (which is Safari only...).

  • good luck (Score:5, Interesting)

    by burris (122191) on Wednesday November 14 2007, @02:37PM (#21353369)
    I remember when ACE was announced. For you youngin's, the Advanced Computing Environment was an alliance of Compaq, Microsoft, MIPS Computer Systems, Digital Equipment Corporation, and the Santa Cruz Operation to build the next generation of computers in 1991. Basically, they wanted to wrestle control of the industry away from Intel. Steve Jobs was famously quoted as saying industry alliances always fail because there are just too many competing interests. He challenged people to name some successful industry alliances.

    Can anyone name some successful computer industry alliances composed of competing members? This alliance has tons of members who compete directly with each other: handset manufacturers, software companies, chip manufacturers. The idea that these companies are going to align all of their interests, come together and produce anything is pretty far fetched IMHO.
    • I think that calling this an alliance is just PR. Maybe I'm missing something, but they don't all have to produce the same thing. They don't have to use exactly the same application software, they don't have to use the same form factor, they don't have to agree on which features to ship or enable.

      This seems more to me like the industry following Compaq and standardizing on the IBM BIOS in the early 1980s. With that decision out of the way, you could produce computers in a variety of form factors with whatev

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by imstanny (722685)

      He challenged people to name some successful industry alliances.
      OPEC

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by imstanny (722685)

      Can anyone name some successful computer industry alliances composed of competing members? This alliance has tons of members who compete directly with each other: handset manufacturers, software companies, chip manufacturers. The idea that these companies are going to align all of their interests, come together and produce anything is pretty far fetched IMHO.

      IMHO, you should read the report. The companies listed are not competing with each other. Unless of course Syanptics is producing processing chips and Texas Instruments is generating revenue by making touch pads.

      1. VESA [vesa.org]
      2. The Open Group [theopengroup.org]
      3. IEEE [ieee.org]
      4. GSM [wikipedia.org]
      5. The Unicode Consortium [unicode.org]
      6. Bluetooth SIG [bluetooth.org]
      7. CAN [can-cia.org]
      8. EIA [eia.org] (responsible for, among other things, JEDEC [jedec.org], who are responsible for DDR and related standards)
    • PowerPC is a RISC microprocessor architecture created by the 1991 Apple-IBM-Motorola alliance, known as AIM.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC [wikipedia.org]
  • The question is whether gPhone can establish a profound ecosystem of its own. It might do so & still not materially affect Apple, since Apple is offering an integraded personal digital ecosystem that gPhone is not aiming for in Android.

    Besides everything else, I predict that given Google's tight relationship with Apple, we will see Google ads at some point on the iPhone.

    With the volume of handsets worldwide, there is plenty of room for 2-3 GREAT players.
  • Let's ignore the touch screen, which I'm not sure is the greatest idea for a cel phone anyhow. Beyond that I'm comparing the features promised by both Apple and Google to a Nokia N82 [reghardware.co.uk] soon available in Europe and I see:

    It boasts a five-megapixel camera with a xenon flash and Carl Zeiss optics, and sports a 2.4in display that rotates from portrait to landscape view at the flick of a wrist, thanks to a built in accelerometer. The device includes Assisted GPS technology ... and compensates for weak satellite

  • uhhh (Score:3, Informative)

    by dfj225 (587560) on Wednesday November 14 2007, @02:54PM (#21353633) Homepage Journal
    Well, you could do all that or go to the Android site (code.google.com/android) and download the SDK as well as watch the developer videos that are posted. Having done this, you can see the UI as it stands now. Which, by the way, is very different (and much more pleasant, IMHO) than what is shown in the images linked from TFA.

    In addition, you can also see from the SDK's emulator what chip is being emulated (ARM926EJ-S [41069265] revision 5) and how much ram is available (96MB) and so on.

    Why so much pure speculation when there is much more accurate data available from the published SDK?

  • Why Predict? Here's a Demo (Score:3, Informative)

    by asphaltjesus (978804) on Wednesday November 14 2007, @03:06PM (#21353805)
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb2N0QzX1NI [youtube.com]

    This doesn't look particularly revolutionary from an end-user perspective. The video uses a bunch of different buttons to do stuff, so I don't know how a touch screen would improve matters dramatically.

    If someone says, "Just wait. It'll be great!" I dunno, there appears to be a bunch of gui-stuff already done and that's the hardest and least sexy part of the work that hardly anyone is willing to re-do.
  • And we all know how that turned out for Apple (vs. Intel/Microsoft).

    If you want a high-end phone and are willing to pay a premium so that that software and hardware work together seamlessly (because they're both made by the same company), you'll buy an Apple iPhone.

    If you want a commodity phone that runs a ubiquitous UI (OS), but maybe doesn't work perfectly in all situations (e.g. driver problems), you'll buy a gPhone containing standardized hardware (read: cheap, in both senses of the word).

    Apple will con

  • Not the hardware - the IDEA (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SharpFang (651121) on Wednesday November 14 2007, @03:33PM (#21354187) Homepage Journal
    The phone itself, if ever created as such (and not just a dozen platform-compliant phones from different manufacturers) won't be revolutionary by and in itself.

    It's the software it can come with that is the true revolution. You'll get a fully programmable, and EASILY programmable device providing you with mostly everything you desire. And because of the 'free software' idea, you won't be limited by silly patents.

    Imagine this:
    Combine GPS capablity (positioning relative to specific BTS, not the satellites) with ringer phone settings: entering theatre or lecture hall turns "silent" on.
    Hack the GSM connection or even bluetooth, and you have a functional walkie-talkie for short-range talking for free.
    Port Gameboy, NES and some more emulators.
    Allow for morse code SMS text input (way faster than multitap, often faster than T9) and readout (read SMS without taking the phone off your pocket)
    Skype->VoIP could come cheaper than most mobile connection rates (especially interntational)
    GPS without GPS module - use BTS pings to triangulate your location and find yourself on Google Maps.
    All kinds of weird shit you can pull out with the multitap, including fingers-smearing OpenCanvas-like multiplayer painting.
    Combine a few of these for a bigger screen.
    Use a bluetooth full-size PC qwerty keyboard. Maybe somehow a 17" screen too.
    Emulate iPhone (and annoy the shit off Mac users)
    Combine it with some GPIO hardware and use it to drive stuff remotely (a car?)
    Get a handful of simple hardware (maybe Chineese will produce something that will plug into USB), run the emulator with modifications and change your laptop or even desktop into a (rather big) gPhone.
    Build your own. The specs are quite open.
    Run a modified manager process that keeps 95% of the phone's features powered down unless you specifically switch them on (including screen and most of the software) keeping the phone to run two weeks on a single charge (all power used by other chips goes to GSM).
    Stream mp3s from your home server.
    Use internal temp sensors and battery controller for a "hand warmer" function.
    Scanner, Mouse (using camera) or Trackpad (using touchscreen) for PC.
    Precisely tune the vibration motor timing, accelerometer input and the camera input and change the phone into an RC/autonomic vehicle moving using vibrations of precise waveform making it slide in a specific direction... ...and a thousand more which are just too difficult with Symbian and iPhone.

  • We don't need new technology! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by erroneus (253617) on Wednesday November 14 2007, @03:35PM (#21354211) Homepage
    We need today's technology unhindered! Every time you turn around, the phone companies reduce or remove functionality built into the phones so they can make more money somehow... preventing people from sending attachments, preventing people from creating and transferring their own ring tones to their phones from their PCs and on and on and on.

    We don't need anything that's not already available. We just need something unbroken.
      • I always enjoying hearing about things people find disgusting or that they dislike.

        Well then, my latest slashdot journal [slashdot.org] is just for you - not just a rant, but a curmudgeon rant! What more could you ask for?

        -mcgrew

      • Re:I didn't think it was possible... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by enomar (601942) on Wednesday November 14 2007, @04:15PM (#21354817)
        Yeah, all they've done is create a company with a market cap over 200 billion. They're dumb. You could have done that. What you're forgetting is that "being advertising middlemen" required them to create a huge, scalable infrastructure that spans the globe. Then they had to figure out the distributed software architecture to make it all work. I love when people say Google doesn't innovate or that they buy all their products. What few people realize is that Google is the Walmart of technology. They've innovated by engineering massively scalable, highly distributed systems AND they've figured how to incorporate dozens of great applications into that infrastructure. They have essentially streamlined the "information supply chain". What have you done?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by 2nd Post! (213333)
      Funny, I would have said:
      Apple makes hardware that works
      Google makes software that works

      You misinterpret the iPhone's initial market if you think it is suitable for business (it isn't), for instant messaging (it doesn't have that feature), or social networking (unless you want to use the built in Safari web browser).

      All the iPhone does (for now) is:
      Phone
      Internet
      Media
      A light smattering of accessory applications

      And I only paid $300 for mine. $600 was so four months ago. The 8GB iPhone is only $399.

      And at the
      • "You misinterpret the iPhone's initial market if you think it is suitable for business (it isn't), for instant messaging (it doesn't have that feature), or social networking (unless you want to use the built in Safari web browser)."
        Which is why the GP said (bold emphasis mine): "I mean seriously you can't use the iPhone for business, you can't use it to omgkfcbbq Instantmessage your friends. You can't use it for social networking."

        Other than that, I agree with you completely. Google will make an OS that wi
        • It's good to see competition actually work. For everbodys sake, the gphone only has to be a marginal success before owners of iphones will demand that apple add features like IM.

          What will be interesting, once the iphone SDK comes up, what you'll actually be able to do. I'm suspecting that every application that goes on the iPhone will have to be signed by apple, etc... Thus, getting mame on your iphone without voiding your warrenty will be out of the question.
    • Um, well, yeah, that's a good idea, though it's not going to kill the iPhone. But what could cause such a thing to be launched IS a way to kill the iPhone. A really open platform that's easy to develop on. A plethora of free, fun, useful apps, some of which will be amazing and an overnight success in a way that the phone itself won't be.

      Someone here pointed out that Apple is a Prada to Google's Samsonite. As far as people see it that way (and there are lots, I know), Apple has nothing to worry about. B

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