So, anyone looking to get one? I have to admit, hardware and OS wise, it's looking to be a pretty nice smart phone. Hopefully the battery life will be decent, that could be the one flaw I see in it.

I'm very interested. I've been using the G1 for almost a year now, and the OS is severely - I say severely - hindered by the hardware. Every time I pick up my wife's 3GS and do something as simple as swipe between screens or...well...anything, I get insanely jealous of the speed.

I've rooted my G1, have apps2sd, and am fastidious about monitoring open apps. My phone is as fast as a G1 can be, and it still drives me bonkers.

All that said, I thought I saw, in the leaked specs for the Droid**, that the processor was 5xx MHz. I'm pretty sure the G1 has a 5xx MHz CPU. That concerns me greatly.

I think I'm going to wait for one of the models built on the Snapdragon platform...


**or whatever it's going to be called - they're still not clear on whether "Droid" refers to a handset or a line

The processor in the Droid is basically the same one in the 3GS and Palm Pre. Remember, MHz != performance. Your G1 has an ARM11, while the 3Gs, Pre and Droid have a Cortex family ARM (one generation newer).

Engadget has some hands on videos posted, showing the interface is quite responsive, and the web browsing is only slightly slower then the 3GS.

If I were interested in this platform, I would probably wait for another manufacturer's handset to come out. This one is Motorola. While I loved their processors back in the day, I can't think of a single decent handset from them, ever. I know this one is running the Android OS, but knowing Motorola, they're going to fuck it up somehow. On top of any such calamity, they'll probably mis-market the hell out of it and then follow it up with something completely inconsistent. No one else seems to understand how to keep a brand flourishing and a product line consistent and tight.

LOL
Try Motorola as sold by Verizon!

...and yes, I'm interested in just such an ordeal as that.
My 'New Every Two' credit has matured and I've got to re-up my contract soon, so I'm looking closely at the Droid.

Motorola, for all their faults, actually knows a bit about building good hardware. Think about how revolutionary the original Motorola RAZR was when it came out, with a tough metal body rather than the craptastic plastic that was otherwise standard beforehand.

Without having handled a Droid, I can't speak to whether this particular one knocks it out of the park or not, but I'm intrigued.

My two-year AT&T contract doesn't end until next summer, and I'm still reasonably happy with my iPhone and with AT&T. (In Houston, 3G works much better than what I've heard about San Francisco.) I'll reevaluate the situation then and decide whether I want to stay or go. Who knows, by then there will probably be Android GSM variants worth considering.

Gah! You're right. I hadn't seen what kind of processor was in it. I think it was a reasonable assumption, given that practically every Android device on the market these days has the same processor. When I saw the same speed I assumed. Ah well.

If it's as snappy as the 3GS, and well designed, then I guess I'd consider it. In the meantime, I'm hoping that Cyanogen (developer of the most popular G1 replacement ROM) will release some 2.0 updates.


I believe "the Droid" is another name for the Motorola Sholes, which I've heard will have a GSM version...

The Sony Ericsson looks like a winner:
1GHz Snapdragon CPU
8.1 MP Camera
4.1 OLED Display

I just hope it has a hardware keyboard and isn't an AT&T phone.

Talking about new phones, I've been curious about this:

Nokia N900



No 3G on AT&T just T-Mobile in the USA.

He has said he will be working on 2.0 for the G1 just as soon as he gets the source. I'm eagerly awaiting it too.

Those sound like great specs to me. I know MHz isn't everything when it comes to speed, but I've heard great things about the Snapdragon.

I'm going back and forth on the Droid, but I'm hesitant to go with Verizon and/or Motorola. I get a bad feeling from that.

Can't wait to hear more about the SE device.

If every non-Apple vendor ships Android, and doesn't gratuitously lock it down or customized it into oblivion, then Android will be on its way to being the sort of standard platform on phones that Windows is on PCs.

My big question is what Microsoft's going to do to fight it. Even if they gave away Windows Mobile for free, open source, the works, would it make a dent?

And then there's Apple. I wouldn't expect them to change anything, so long as they're going gangbusters like they are presently.

Microsoft doesn't appear to understand how poorly they're doing in mobile phones. I watched the Engadget show with Balmer, and he totally played down his earlier statements about how Windows Mobile isn't at all where it should be.

The time it's taking to move from 6.1 to 6.5 to 7 is unacceptably long, and there's rarely an upgrade path for existing phones (at least not an easy one). Compare that to Apple, who puts in major new features in each of their iPhone updates. Or Google, who will have updated Android 3 times in one year. Or Palm, who releases updates like crazy. And none of these companies charge for the updates, and so far they've applied to all the phones released.

And none of this even starts touching on the fact that Windows Mobile is just a terrible OS. Sure, it was one of the first to support apps, but just like the Blackberry it was so hard to find and install those apps.

The one thing I like about Windows Mobile is the home screen. There's a heck of alot you can do with it, and with third party software you can make it super productive with appointments and emails. That's it. That's the extent of it.

Anyway, sorry for the rant. I mostly liked my Windows Mobile phone, but that was almost 3 years ago, it felt outdated then, and they haven't done anything since then but change the home screen to a honeycomb pattern.

Windows Mobile is on its way out. Symbian will be not far behind it. At least, this is how I think things are in the US. I know there are definitely other countries who love the whole stylus thing...

Symbian is inside most of the higher end Nokia phones.

But has Symbian succeeded or failed at attracting an ecosystem of third-party apps? Are Symbian apps portable across widely different phones?

Nokia bought Trolltech not that long ago, and while there's now an official Qt port for Symbian, how long before Nokia simply decides to use Qt on Maemo on all its high end phones like it's currently doing with the N900?

Last time I looked, the basic phones are still running their proprietory "Nokia OS". The mid range phones would still be a viable platform for their Symbian based OS but if they can slim Maemo down enough then its possible they'd switch...

Based on the N900 I'd say it looks like Nokia is moving toward Maemo as the OS for their high end phones. They say they are sticking with Symbian but I don't know...

Like others here are saying: except for their current flagship phone, the N900.

Besides, I was putting an emphasis on the American market. I don't know the numbers, but I'd be willing to bet that Symbian has almost no market share in the US.

More people buy the basic and mid range phones than the top end ones. Not everybody needs or wants a smartphone.

Does nobody in the US have a Nokia?

Not really.

I do! I have a fine Nokia 2115i

Huh. Thats odd. They're so ubiquitous here.

Yeah, Nokia is just plain irrelevant in this country. I don't know a single person who owns one, and I know plenty of people with non-smartphones. I see far more Samsung or Sanyo handsets than Nokia these days.

Nokia used to be the most popular handset brand in Canada AFAIK. This was before he Japanese and Korean companies had any penetration at all in the 90's. Sony hadn't yet partnered with Ericsson either. Motorola was making super-fugly phones but was also a big name.

LG, Samsung, Sanyo, etc. started coming out with handsets every week, largely what I'd consider disposable crap, which the carriers just loved to rebrand. These became those $0 phones or the $10 phones which firmly cemented them as volume leaders. They made a huge rush with their generic and at one point ubiquitous, flip phones.

From a consumer perspective over here, it would have seemed like Nokia wasn't making handsets with as many features of flash. But in reality it was the carriers that simply stopped offering any type of variety in Nokia's line. A quick trip to Europe showed a lot more mobile variety. One, can say that Nokia didn't cater to North American taste, however, it was the carriers that shaped that taste toward the bland and poorly designed Asian products.

With few exceptions, Samsung, LG and the other Asian (non-smart) phones for North America are complete crap and always have been. The North American market isn't exactly discerning when it comes to this type of product. Well, when it comes to many types, but that's besides the point right now. And that's how the carriers l like it. Being able to release whatever garbage they want, rebranded to the 9's on a weekly basis to hide their shit rates with a low or no cost entry price.

I'm sure if Nokia had decided to start making ultra-crap handsets in 2002, the market would look at lot different in North America right now.

I'd totally agree with Bruno. I'm feeling a need to sort out my own history of attempting to stay with "cutting edge" phones.

Back in the older days, before the grand unification of U.S. cellular companies, there were four different radio standards in the U.S.: AMPS analog, TDMA, GSM, and CDMA. During those days, there was no such thing as a quad-band GSM phone, so all the really cool GSM phones didn't work here. In 1998, when I first moved to Houston, I had a Nokia 6110 (TDMA + AMPS), which I later replaced with a much more compact Nokia 8210 (also TDMA + AMPS). That was around the time that TDMA was going away and GSM was taking over the show. I switched from Houston Cellular (later to be absorbed by AT&T) to Ariel Communications (later to be absorbed by T-Mobile) and got an Ericsson T28, which stayed in my desk drawer because I imported the then-hot Ericsson T39m as my phone. It even had Bluetooth (which I never really got working with the Bluetooth USB adapter that I bought). What really sold me, though, was the fact that I could synchronize my contacts and calendar with my computer. The official Ericsson software was total crap, but I found third-party software that worked great.

I seem to recall, at the time, that all the coolest phones were GSM, leveraging the larger market volumes in Europe. CDMA phones, at the time, were a whole generation behind. Bigger, uglier, chunkier.

I was missing the simplicity and speed of the Nokia UI, so I imported another European-only phone, the Nokia 5100, which was a bit bigger, but was quite rugged, had a built-in flashlight, and could connect to USB. Amazing. Again, I had to use third-party software for the synchronization. This was the era of totally boring phones from the major American carriers, so importing was the only way to get truly interesting kit.

Next up was the Motorola RAZR. Finally, a domestic-offered phone that was truly interesting. The UI sucked, and again it required third-party software to synchronize properly, but it felt good, had great battery life, and so forth. The RAZR got fried when it got wet (*sigh*) so I imported a KRZR, which my wife is still using. Awesome physical package. Still lame software. This was around the time that Nokia had completely disappeared from the U.S. market. There just wasn't anything compelling from Nokia versus the subsidized cost of a RAZR/KRZR.

Then came the iPhone. Finally, an integrated product, no third-party software, and all the other benefits we all know. I still occasionally miss the simplicity of the Nokia UI and the compact feel of the Motorola handsets. Maybe we'll get that back at some point in a decent smartphone.

At the moment the Nokia smartphone UIs are the complete opposite of that original simple design. They are a confused mess of conflicting and seemingly ramdom UI elements.

I really don't understand how they manage to get from there to here.

My phone story is similar, though I saw back then how important GSM was, and tried to go that route. In 1999, I had the Nokia 5110 with T-Mobile for GSM. The cool thing back then is that I could have this small (for the time) phone, that also had an extra piece that could be added on for analog compatibility. I never needed it, but my mother had the same phone and did use it due to where she worked at the time.

Later that year, Nokia released the really tiny 8210, and I ended up buying one in 2000. Since I had a GSM phone prior, I simply swapped the SIM and had all my contacts. Being able to do this help cement me into GSM, as my account and contacts lived on a smart chip movable between phones. The 8210 lasted me for a while, and I resisted switching to something else, instead just changing out the battery once to extend the life of it.

After the 8210, Apple started influencing my phone choice, due to my recent adoption of the OS X platform. iSync was released along with full bluetooth support in 10.2, and that had me eyeing the Sony Ericsson T68i because it was the phone used in the demos. It was very similar in size to my 8210, so I didn't have to go to a bulkier phone to get the new features. I finally picked mine up in early 2003, and was able to do some pretty cool things with it like auto locking my computer at work based on bluetooth proximity. There were even apps that allowed me to control iTunes and such from the phone.

At this point, I remember Nokia started fading in the US. Most of the tech people I knew were either moving to Sony Ericsson phones as well, or some sort of early Windows/Palm powered smart phone. When it came time to replace the T68i, I went with a T610. And even on the cheep side, other providers were rising up and taking market share away from Nokia. They had left their mark though, because most people knew about the Snake game built into their phones. Also the Nokia default ringtone was embedded in most peoples minds and is even sung in the closing song for This Week in Tech.

After T-Mobile stopped expanding their network aggressively in 2005 and refused to fix common areas for dropped calls, I looked at switching providers to Cingular. With the switch I picked up the Motorola RAZR as well, and kept that up until my first iPhone.

Ironically, the T68i I had in 2003 had certain features the iPhone doesn't have when interfacing with OS X. It used to be possible to see incoming call alerts on the computer via Address Book linking over Bluetooth. You could then either answer, reject, or respond via SMS. And any incoming SMS messages would show up on screen, allowing an IM style chat window.

I really liked the Sony Ericsson T-series phones. I always preferred candybar phones to flips, and those were some of the best designed out there.

From the old Nokia phones, I miss that you could navigate the menus by pressing the digits. Frequent destinations, deep in the menus, you'd just know the digits for and could get there quickly. From my Ericsson and Motorola phones, I miss the single-key dialing shortcuts (although, on the Motorola, they were a pain to set up). Hold down one key for a second, and it's dialing a preset.

If only the iPhone had some way of making frequent operations go that fast.