Google Nexus One, the most-awaited mobile phone of the year, is ready for launch. Google has confirmed that it is working on its own phone, which will be called the Google Nexus One. In the last few days, the internet was bombarded with rumors of the Google phone being called the Google Nexus One.The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the name Nexus One, also said that Google would directly sell its phone to customers, by 2010. Google has now confirmed the news and said that the Google Nexus One will be launched by January 2010.
Nexus One price:
Google will sell the phone unlocked, so customers will have to buy their mobile phone services separately. In contrast, most of the mobile phone makers work with a wireless carrier like AT&T or Verizon, before finalizing the design of the product. Google Nexus One will not be locked to wireless carrier. However, this also means that the price subsidies usually offered by wireless carriers will not available with the Google Nexus One. How much difference does the price subsidy make? Well, an iPhone in the US with a 2-year contract is available from AT&T for $200, while an iPhone from China Unicom in China costs the equivalent of $732. The absence of a carrier tie-up may push up the actual sale price of the Google Nexus One. Any price which compares well with iPhone is bound to have a lot of takers, especially since the Android Market is growing faster than Apple’s iPhone App Store. Itproportal has reported that Mario Queiroz, Vice President, Product Management at Google, has said in a post on Google’s official mobile blog that the company has started a “dogfooding” (giving the phone to employees for testing) process for a phone. Querioz is said to have described, in the post, a concept of a mobile lab that is a device combining innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android to experiment with new mobile features.
Specifications of the Google Nexus One are thin on the ground but from what is known so far the phone will run the Android 2.1 operating system. We can safely expect to be loaded with the latest versions of all applications from Google. There are no indications whether it will be a GSM/GPRS/EDGE phone or a CDMA-EVDO phone. Nexus One may even be a world phone, boasting CDMA and GSM capabilities in one package. One can safely assume that the Nexus One will come with WiFi, 3G capability, wireless syncing, HSDPA/HSUPA and good multimedia features. Google’s Navigation with turn-by-turn voice directions and satellite imagery are likely to come with the Nexus One.
