Nexus One / Google Phone
Google looks set to bring forth their own Google Branded Google Phone. The details are starting to fall in place now as more and more is revealed through the power of the internet. See the pictures posted earlier from Ryan. Through some previous posts here at thesearethedroids.com we have shown you that the first real signs of the phone’s existence were tweeted on Dec 11th about the new Google Phone. During the last all hands meeting at Google, Google employees from around the world were given these new Google Phones as a mobile lab experiment.
We recently came up with the concept of a mobile lab, which is a device that combines innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android to experiment with new mobile features and capabilities, and we shared this device with Google employees across the globe. This means they get to test out a new technology and help improve it.
They are handing these phones out so that the employees can test the phones prior to being released to the world in Jan 2010. Let’s start with the hardware details as we know it.
Hardware
The phones will be built by HTC, though Google may have had a huge hand in the design of the hardware and software for this phone. Basically, it sounds like Google designed the phone and HTC had the facilities to produce it. The phone reports itself to be called “Nexus One”, which follows along the line of a WSJ Article and a BGR article. The phone will have a high resolution OLED screen, a 5MP camera with flash, a trackball and four touch sensitive buttons at the bottom of the screen like a Droid. It will come with a “crazyfast” Snapdragon processor running Android 2.1 with some new graphical features to the UI. Also, it comes with two microphones so it can do some software magic and cancel out surrounding noises. There is no physical keyboard, it’s all on-screen. Finally, it’s a GSM phone and should be sold unlocked. Some rumors are that this phone sports all the major 3G network frequencies in the US, so it should be usable on T-Mobile or AT&T, however, a tweet from John Gruber of Daring Fireball states, “The bummer I’m hearing about Nexus One: it’s GSM and unlocked, but on T-Mobile’s 3G band, so it works on AT&T but EDGE-only.” We’ll have to wait for more information to come. Lot’s of tweets are stating the phone they saw is running on AT&T’s network and I doubt Google would want to test the phone sans 3G. All of this in a package that could be thinner than an iPhone.
Software
The biggest bit of information we currently have is that it will have Android 2.1. With that, it will have some noise cancellation functions, some update UI features such as animated backgrounds and finally a speech to text interface for dictating text messages and emails. According to a few tweets from friends of friends etc, the phone supposedly runs really fast. This phone may have 100% Google built apps at sale.
When can you get it?
Word is, Jan 2010 is when us consumers can pay out to Google for a Nexus One. It will be sold directly through Google and word is, maybe through other channels as well, such as Best Buy.
That’s what we know as of right now. I will keep this post updated as new information is available. Don’t forget, if you have some info to share, drop us a line through our “Tip Us” page.
Photos
Here are some more photos, from Engadget, which were revealed on Monday Dec 14th. These are some great shots. See our original post about them.
