Samsung Omnia - More Than a Phone

NEXUS ONE

Whether the marketplace is ready or not, the Big Guns in consumer electronics are about to make their move at the dawn of the New Year.

Screenshots sent to Gizmodo from an anonymous source reveal the possible price and tariff details of the Nexus One Google phone, along with some extra hardware details.

(Courtesy Gizmodo.com)

Next Tuesday, Google is expected to announce its long-rumored Nexus One smartphone. It is undoubtedly designed to run the Google Android operating system for cellphones, which the search giant introduced more than a year ago. Android was envisioned as a major breakthrough in cellphones because it offered an "open" operating system – i.e., one that other companies could use and design applications for. At the time, this strategy was compared to that of Microsoft Windows, which broke the market hegemony of Apple's decidedly non-open OS in the mid-1980s and within a decade, turned Apple into a niche company. This time around, the new Android phones were supposed to break the hegemony of the Apple iPhone.

So far, it hasn't quite worked out that way with Android. A number of cell phone companies – notably Motorola, HTC, and Samsung – have adopted Android and seen impressive sales. However, this time around Apple, though still exhibiting much of its old "closed" and proprietary ways, has learned some important lessons over the last 20 years.

For one thing, Apple understands, better perhaps than any company on the planet, the importance of being not only perpetually innovative – but with a vast and loyal army of Apple fanatics behind it – to regularly take category-busting risks. Thus, the amazing run, beginning a decade ago, of the iMac, MacBook, iPod and iPhone. These landmark (and in the case of the iPod, historic) products not only were ambitious in their goals and beautifully designed, but they also exhibited multiple features that were so innovative that they forced the competition to spend years catching up – and by then, Apple had already moved on to the next breakthrough.

Military theorists like to say that the goal of combat is to get inside your opponent's "decision horizon" – that is, to move so quickly that the enemy can't respond in time before you have moved on to the next victory. That's exactly what Apple, at its best, has done to the consumer electronics world … and in the process has left competitors reeling, loyal customers thrilled, and not least, Apple regaining its lost market share and making its shareholders wealthy.

G-Day is tomorrow: Google to unveil 'iPhone killer' Nexus One... with an online price tag of £300

Google will finally reveal its first mobile phone tomorrow after months of frenzied speculation about its arrival, it emerged today.

The Nexus One handset, which uses software designed by the internet giant, has been developed to take on the dominant iPhone.

Full details of the Google-branded touchscreen device - manufactured by Taiwanese company HTC -  have mostly been kept under wraps despite occasional leaks.

Calling the future: How Google's new Nexus One phone will look, according to an internet preview

But tomorrow, Google's founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page will host a press conference at their California headquarters and finally show off the phone to the world.

New reports today suggest the Nexus One, named after a type of ‘replicant’ cyborg in Ridley Scott’s science-fiction film Blade Runner, will be sold online for around £300.

 

It is understood that the handset, said to have a larger screen than Apple’s iPhone and with a more powerful five-megapixel camera, will be sold in the U.S. before arriving in Europe.

The smartphone, which uses Google’s Android mobile phone operating system, reportedly has a 3.7in-long screen and runs on an exchangeable 3.7V battery.

It comes with a 4GB memory but also offers users the option of adding a 32GB memory card, according to technology website endgadget.com.

Sleek: The Nexus One looks similar to the iPhone - but its screen is 0.2in longer and it weighs less

Buyers will be able to access the Web, play video games and use Google’s free GPS maps.

Its unlocked version will allow consumers to use any wireless internet provider of their choice.

But Google is thought to have already approached T-Mobile and Vodafone in the UK to provide a cheaper locked version on contract.

The Nexus One looks similar to the iPhone but has a few distinguishing features such as a two-dimensional bar code capable of identifying each individual handset.

Google's phone is a big step for the search giant that, until now, has offered phones only in partnership with other companies.

Functions: Google Maps (left) and a news feed are among the features on the phone manufactured by HTC

It set its sights on developing its own so-called ‘smartphone’ because they are a becoming an increasingly important way of accessing the internet.

As more people go online using their mobile phones and the Web, the firm aims to deliver more ads to them.

The search engine giant hopes to take on Apple’s iconic iPhone, which has become, since its launch in 2007, the benchmark in the rapidly growing market.

Google revealed its open-source Android operating system nearly two years ago.

Since then, a dozen Android phones by companies such as Samsung and Motorola have been launched, including the recent, heavily promoted Motorola Droid.

N900: A new hope for Nokia

January 4, 2010, 1:38pm

The coming of the N900 is Nokia's right move to maintain its lead in the mobile industry. It has all the ingredients for a mobile phone to be successful. Others say that the N900 is not for everybody, that it's only for the geeks and the early adaptors who really love technology; I say, why would you deprive yourself of a phone like this? Read on and decide.

The Nokia N900 has a multi-tasking capability that allows many applications to run simultaneously because of its 600-MHZ processor, up to 1GB application memory and OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics acceleration.

OpenGL stands for Open Graphics Library and is the industry standard for an application program interface for defining 2D and 3D objects. It is the same graphics acceleration technology used in the iPhone 3Gs.

The greatest achievement of the N900 is putting "real" Internet into a mobile platform. It features a high-resolution WVGA touch screen and fast internet connectivity with 10 Mbps HSDPA and 2 Mbps HSUPA support and WLAN. It uses Mozilla-based web browser with Adobe Flash 9.4 support making the websites look the way they would on any computer.

Among all the smartphones available in the Technews Lab, the browser of the N900 is the best. Yes, it is better than iPhone's Safari web browser as it supports not only Flash 9.4 and plugins but also Javascript, frames, CSS and most everything a desktop browser does.

This means no more rotten strawberries in your farm in farmville. Let's give way to a brief self-buildup by Nokia for its new baby.

Panorama desktop, according to Nokia, allows you to create a desktop for your friends, one for your music and videos, and another dedicated to the web. Jump effortlessly between your desktops by moving your finger across the touch-screen display. That easy.

The dashboard. When you open an application or start an IM chat, it sits on your dashboard for whenever you need it. Multi-task by switching seamlessly between your applications and chat windows in the time it takes to tap the screen. You can run everything smoothly because of it's powerful processor. The dashboard also notifies you as soon as you get a new SMS, email, or you have a missed call.

Hail the Maemo Browser. View webpages as you would on your home computer with clear full-screen browsing.

The Nokia N900 as a mega-phone. Access your phone instantly, make a call by simply rotating your device from landscape to portrait mode. From the desktop or dashboard, all it takes is a twist of your wrist to instantly access the phone application.

Other notable features of the Nokia N900 are: 3.5" 16M-color resistive touchscreen; Maemo 5 OS; Mozilla-based web browser with Adobe Flash 9.4 support; slide-out three-row full QWERTY keyboard; ARM Cortex A8 600MHz CPU, PowerVR SGX graphics accelerator; Quad-band GSM and tri-band 3G support; 5 MP autofocus camera with dual-LED flash; 24fps video recording; 10 Mbps HSDPA and 2 Mbps HSUPA support; Wi-Fi and GPS with A-GPS; 32GB onboard storage (256 MB of RAM); DivX and XviD video playback; built-in accelerometer; proximity sensor; solid audio quality; and kinetic scrolling.

Personally, the Nokia N900 we have looks really promising as anybody's main phone for its good build quality. Nokia has been known for having "user friendly" phones but we got bored of just having easy to use phones. We demanded more features, faster speed and additional applications.

When Nokia offered us music we chose to get the iPhone; when Nokia gave us email we decided to get the Blackberry. Now Nokia is showing off "real" internet in a mobile platform and we have no choice but to get it with the N900 because it's the best among all the available phones today.

The N900 would put Nokia back in the playing field where Smartphones play. It is undoubtedly a statement from Nokia that it's still a force to be reckoned with when it comes to smartphones.

(The N900 used in this article is a property of Manila Bulletin Technews from a 3rd party supplier, it's the first commercial unit of N900 in the Philippines and this page is not sponsored by Nokia.)

N900

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GENERAL	2G Network	GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
	3G Network	HSDPA 1700 / 2100 / 900
	Announced	2009, August
	Status	Available. Released 2009, November

SIZE	Dimensions	110.9 x 59.8 x 18 mm, 113 cc
	Weight	181 g

DISPLAY	Type	TFT resistive touchscreen, 16M colors
	Size	800 x 480 pixels, 3.5 inches
		- Proximity sensor for auto turn-off - Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate - Full QWERTY keyboard

SOUND	Alert types	Vibration; MP3 ringtones
	Speakerphone	Yes, with stereo speakers
		- 3.5 mm audio jack

MEMORY	Phonebook	Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall
	Call records	Detailed, max 30 days
	Internal	32 GB storage, 256 MB RAM
	Card slot	microSD, up to 16GB, buy memory

DATA	GPRS	Class 32
	EDGE	Class 32
	3G	HSDPA, 10Mbps; HSUPA, 2Mbps
	WLAN	Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, DLNA
	Bluetooth	Yes, v2.1 with A2DP
	Infrared port	Yes
	USB	Yes, v2.0 microUSB

CAMERA	Primary	5 MP, 2576x1936 pixels, Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, Dual LED flash, video light
	Features	Geo-tagging
	Video	Yes, WVGA(848 x 480)@25fps
	Secondary	Yes, VGA

FEATURES	OS	Maemo 5
	CPU	ARM Cortex A8 600 MHz, PowerVR SGX graphics
	Messaging	SMS (threaded view), Email, Push Email, IM
	Browser	xHTML, HTML, RSS feeds
	Radio	Stereo FM radio (via third party software); FM transmitter
	Games	Yes, 5 + downloadable
	Colors	Black
	GPS	Yes, with A-GPS support; Ovi Maps
	Java	No
		- Skype and GoogleTalk VoIP integration - MP3/WMA/WAV/eAAC+ music player - WMV/RealVideo/MP4/AVI/XviD/DivX video player - TV-out - PDF document viewer - Photo editor - Adobe Flash Player 9.4

BATTERY		Standard battery, Li-Ion 1320 mAh (BL-5J)