Tag Archives: nexus one

Google all set to pull the plug off the Nexus One Online Store

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Now getting a Nexus One  via the web will become a history. Google has just announced that it is all set to pull the plug on the Nexus One web store and that it will concentrate more on selling the phone via retail and carriers.

“While the global adoption of the Android platform has exceeded our expectations, the Web store has not,” Andy Rubin, vice president of engineering at Google, wrote in a blog post. People generally want to know more about the product by getting hands on experience. When selling the phone via carriers , the customers will get to know the wide variety of plans available and choose the one which suits them.

Google launched the product in early January and people could purchase it online at www.google.com/phone. There were reports about the slow sales via the web, which could be seen as the reason behind such a step.

On April 30, Vodafone became Europe’s first carrier to sell the Nexus One. Google said Friday that going forward, it will follow this model rather than Web sales. ”We’ll shift to a similar model globally,” Rubin wrote. Once the magnitude of sales through retail rise, Google will certainly put a halt to the web sales.

This was a much expected and needed step from Google. Nexus One would stand nowhere if Google stuck to the online sale model and poor sale figures reflected the fact on those revenue charts. While Android devices are on the rise, lets see what the big “G” has got in store for marketing when Big Daddy’s like iPhone rule the market!

Android 2.2 burns the rubber : Runs 450% faster than 2.1!

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Some lucky dogs over at Android Police have been spotted running the absolute newest build of Android, Froyo 2.2, on a Google Nexus One.  Aside from the appearance upgrades and overall bug fixes, 2.2 is about 4 1/2 times or 450% faster than its predecessor, 2.1 Eclair.

Although this update of the increasingly popular Android OS hasn’t been formally released or advertised, it’s future looks rather bright!  Expect some awesome new hardware to go along with the new speedy system sometime rather soon. If you forgot, Adobe is planning for a flash release on 2.2 too and looking at it’s performance right now on the speedometer, it seems Android is indeed going to rock it! Would this prove Steve Jobs 1000+ word essay wrong? Stay Tuned!

You can check out Android Police’s benchmarks here.

Know what would go great with the new Froyo 2.2? The newly announced Square App for Android.  Stay tuned for more on this!

Via [Gizmodo]

Apple turning against Adobe while it seeks cover under Google

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Apple and Adobe are having a kind of coldwar. This all started when Flash was not included in the iPhone OS and now not on the iPad OS too. Recently at a town hall meeting, Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs slammed Adobe and called it lazy.

There have been huge discussions, lengthy blog posts written, tweets all over. Tablets could be the future of browsing and Apple is already a leader in Mobile device manufacturing so it could be a major game player in the future and Adobe knows this fact very well. Apple had skipped flash with the launch of the iPad and perhaps this could be a huge loss to Adobe as they miss a lot of consumers and to consumers as they miss a lot of content.

Apple is not interested in integrating flash in either of it’s platforms (iPhone or iPad) and their CEO in a town hall meeting with their execs said that the future is HTML5. Folks at Adobe did take it seriously and constantly forced on the fact that Flash is installed on about 98% on computers all over the world and 75% of video content is flash and flash covers a huge portion of active content on the Web.

They are announcing Flash for top platforms like Google’s Android, RIM’s Blackberry, Nokia, Palm Pre and these partnerships are a part of the Open Screen Project which has over 50 partners.

For example, the recent Nexus One from Google will rock with a great experience in the browser with Flash Player 10.1.

Adobe can do two things

  • Either get flash integrated or
  • Stop consumers from buying Apple Products

They say they have tried first method whose failure leads them to no other option than the second one. Apple and Google have also grown hostile and as they saw Sharing a common enemy makes way to a great friend, and same applies here. Adobe and Google are taking each other’s cover in their fight against Apple.

Adobe could possible start promoting Google products publicly surely as they’ve got Adobe technology integrated and this would be profitable to both of the companies.

Multi Touch finally arrives at Nexus One officially via OTA update

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No more missing multi touch interface on Nexus One, Google just issued a OTA (Over the Air) update for Android running on Nexus one’s which brings in multi touch capabilities to your Web Browser, Gallery and Google Maps. Earlier some third party patches had enabled Multi Touch only in the browser.

This means all those pinch and zoom gestures which iPhone users are much used to have now arrived at Nexus one. Also the Google Maps version is upgraded to 3.4 which brings the talked about “Night Mode” feature to Maps.

Nexus one’s hardware was completely capable of Multi touch gestures but they had not been added initially. Rumors were up that the reason behind Google not adding these features was due to patent infringement matters with Apple as they used the same technology in their popular products, iPhone and iPod touch. Few other market analysts say that it was because Google wanted to track user’s initial reaction to Multi-touch’s absence.

This is an automatic update so it’s not in your hands for the update to start and end but you can surely get the update manually if you don’t have it yet  [Instructions here].

Nexus One Voice recognition blocks harsh words and converts them to ####

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Voice to text sometimes can be embarrassing or even disgusting at times. If you want to text your friend, “Would you like to have chocolate fudge tonight?” and then the word Fudge is mistaken by your device and output is real disgusting, “Would you like to have chocolate fu** tonight?” and the * does stand for the rest of the words.

Anyway, the text receiver would surely break your bones next day. This won’t happen to you if you use your Nexus one which has a inbuilt feature as to hash of all such F and S words. But still, won’t it look weird?

Would you like to have chocolate #### tonight?

Google has a nice reason to state as to why this done in their devices.

“We filter potentially offensive or inappropriate results because we want to avoid situations whereby we might misrecognize a spoken query and return profanity when, in fact, the user said something completely innocent.”

Via Engadget.

The failure of Nexus one begins now : Cannot survive against iPhone?

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Nexus one was so much hyped. Termed as iPhone killer but i had written a post as to why Nexus one won’t be a iPhone killer and i think it’s going true. I have got proof this time too.

First week sales recorded for Nexus one were as low as 20,000 units whereas incase of iPhone about 1,600,000 units were sold. You can argue that it was the third generation phone and such that it would surely have lot of people upgrading but you see these huge numbers do speak the truth. Also, i mean look a Motorola’s droid sales too. They sold about 250,000 units first week and i mean it was also a first cellphone of its kind and still the numbers are quite better than Nexus one.

3G connectivity problems have seemed to worsened problems for Apple and also currently, the biggest factor affecting Nexus one sales could be iPhone 4G rumors in a way because currently a general consumers mindset could be that why not wait for something better and then buy the best among them, and so this though could be stopping large number of customers from buying it now though i don’t deny that Nexus One sales could pick up later.

Nexus one has also got a blow as it’s availability is also less, and it’s only available online for ordering. If they decide to go offline ever then they could expect a lot more sales. In terms of advertising, they’ve not done some big deal and i hope do something about it compared to it’s competitors.

Via Flurry.

7 reasons why the Nexus one won’t kill the iPhone

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When Nexus one came out and even before it’s launch, people started claiming it as the iPhone killer. It’s been the story with nearly all the phones and the most recent one was Motorola Droid.

Applications

If you see Apple’s iPhone has about a 100,000 applications. Yes, there’s a app for everything you would ever think off. Google’s android currently offers 20,000 applications.

Apple crossed 3 Billion downloads recently and 1 billion downloads were achieved in a short span of about 3 months.

Features

If we speak of the camera, Google’s Nexus one has got a 5 megapixel camera while the iPhone has got a 3 Megapixel. You might be guessing that, now i can’t argue on it, nexus is the winner.

Frankly, no. If you use a iPhone you surely love the camera interface and with Video recording capabilities in iPhone 3.0 you might never think of using any other phone again. Also i just wanted to clear out that a two megapixel difference does not affect the picture quality hugely, mostly it’s the quality of the image sensor which i think Apple has got.

You really don’t argue over the multi-touch interface iPhone has got!

Design

Simplicity is brilliant design. Apple’s iPhone completely a living example of that statement. Apple’s design skills have been everywhere, from it’s iPods to those unibody MacBooks and iPhone’s design is just too much to ignore.

No doubt, that Nexus one’s design is nice but it surely isn’t enough to beat the iPhone as of yet (even if you don’t agree with this it’s alright).

The black color on the iPhone goes very well and can suit nearly any of your clothes and styles. This is Apple’s plus point too.

Pricing and availabilty

Google’s phone is priced at $530 without contract and $180 with T-Mobile contract. iPhone is priced at $199 with AT&T contract and $599 for unlocked.

$20 and $50 difference doesn’t make it a big winner though. Well if you know Apple has got the name and some sort of a mindset in most people’s mind. If you think buying an iPhone is cool why won’t you be ready to spend some money more to get the trendy stuff? Also, when your getting access to 80,000 applications more?

The iPhone is available in 77 countries while the Nexus one is present in 48 countries. Also Nexus is ignoring markets like India too where they can expect a high sale number due to huge population. Nexus one will be coming to more countries soon later this year.

Internet Experience

iPhone was the first phone to revolutionize the internet browsing experience. Being first is always a good chance and in this case it surely is. I am not saying that no one can challenge it, (infact many did, like Palm with the pre) but not many have not been successful with their attempt so chances are low.

Integrated Store

One of the biggest advantage iPhone has is the iTunes store. Movie rentals, applications, music and everything you ever want. Android compared to the iPhone store is a kid.

Apart from that, the PC and Mac integration with the iPhone is the best thing you ever wish for. One library for everything Apple (ipods, iphone, macs!) is what i love.

Marketing

Buzz. iPhone’s there in the newspapers in everyday, it’s on television for things which i am sure Apple didn’t pay for. Geeks dream of it. Bloggers love it. Celebs also love it!

Nexus one is a new contender but if Google really wants to kick off iPhone, it surely needs a real strong marketing campaign.

Maintainence

iPhone maintenance costs are very very high but it being in the market for such a long time it doesn’t take a long time to find a good service centre (either authorized, or some guy sitting in his garage).

Here’s another picture of Nexus one Vs. other phone comparison. Have a look over it for some good pricing numbers too.

Forget everything. A new iPhone version could also be on it’s way, 4G iPhone which might give iPhone a great comeback in turns of technology and till now Apple has not disappointed us and i hope so they really won’t on 26th January!

Image Credit : BillShrink, TechTree. You might like to check out AppleInsider’s post too.

Nexus one : The one and the only one

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We knew it and now it’s official. The Google phone is out right now! It didn’t come to us as a big surprise as nearly all the details including the landing pages were leaked out even before the launch of the website.

You can get hands on the Google phone at google.com/phone.

The cellphone is manufactured by HTC and runs on Qualcomm QSD 8250 1 GHz chip. It’s got a 5 Megapixel camera (a lot of cellphones these days got it) with Android 2.1. and it has got a 512 Mb ram. It’s got a 3.7 inch huge screen with touch enabled.

Good enough. Looks sleek and smart. Pricing is $530 (unlocked) and $180 with T-Mobile contract.

Termed as the iPhone killer, Dah.

Nexus One Pricing Plans, T-Mobile Contract and lot more leaked!

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Gizmodo and Engadget got hands on the leaked documents which show the Google Phone’s AKA Nexus One’s landing webpages.

Picture Credit : Engadget

So here’s what is reveals. Nexus One will be available at a price of $530 (unlocked and unsubsidized) and at a price of $179 with a T-Mobile contract which would cost about $79 which would include 500 minutes of talk time, unlimited text, data, and mobile to mobile.

If you try to cancel your contract before 120 days, you have to pay $350 to T-Mobile or you have another choice of giving back the phone to Google (Smart?). Personalization is one of the offerings which allow you to engrave two lines of text behind your phone (Exactly like what Apple does).

Also, you can’t add it to your existing T-Mobile plan and you need to go for a separate Nexus One plan. You can buy this Phone only via the web and 5 Mobile phones can be bought from one account.

Engadget also managed to get Terms of Sale in the PDF form, which you can download.

Google calls for Android press gathering on Jan 5 : Smells like Nexus One

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Google has called all its press mates to gather at their California office on 5th January , 2010 for a press conference and discussion.

Put on your thinking hats. Obviously you might be thinking that this is surely related to Google’s Phone, Nexus One which is running on Android OS.

With the launch of the first Android-powered device just over a year ago, we’ve seen how a powerful, open platform can spur mobile product innovation. And this is just the beginning of what’s possible.

Please join us in Mountain View on January 5, for an Android press gathering.

See, it didn’t take a lot of time to join the dots. Google is doing it Apple style, ha? This could be the public announcement of Nexus One features and specs, which were already leaked out by Engadget.

Via Engadget.