Linked List: December 12, 2009

Saturday, 12 December 2009

WSJ: ‘Google to Start Selling Own Phone Without Wireless Partner by Next Year’ ★

Jessica E. Vascellaro, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (link to get behind the WSJ paywall):

Google Inc. has designed a cellphone it plans to sell directly to consumers as soon as next year, according to people familiar with the matter. The phone is called the Nexus One and is being manufactured for Google by HTC Corp., these people said. It runs Android, the operating system for mobile phones that Google developed, they added. [...]

The Internet giant is taking a new, and potentially risky, approach to selling the device. Rather than selling the phone through a wireless carrier — the way the bulk of phones are sold in the U.S. today — Google plans to sell the Nexus One itself online. Users will have to buy cellular service for the device separately.

No word on pricing. As for the risks:

The move could alienate wireless carriers and handset makers that offer Android phones and do not want to compete with Google.

I’ll bet Motorola and Verizon are delighted.

‘The Tortoise Lays on Its Back, Its Belly Baking in the Hot Sun, Beating Its Legs Trying to Turn Itself Over, but It Can’t, Not Without Your Help. But You’re Not Helping. Why Is That?’ ★

So the new Google Phone identifies itself as “Nexus One” in its user agent string. Nexus is the brand name of the series of androids (a.k.a. replicants) in Blade Runner and Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. The story concerns escaped Nexus-6 models; in the movie, you-know-who is a prototype Nexus-7.

Update: Sony calls their custom Android UI “Nexus”.

Google Coyly Acknowledges New Android Phones Given to Employees ★

Google product management VP Mario Queiroz:

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.

Google Hands Out Unlocked Android 2.1 ‘Google Phones’ to Some Employees ★

No idea about the tech specs or what it looks like yet, but the Googlers tweeting about it claim it’s beautiful. I’ve started getting hits to Daring Fireball with this user agent string, which I believe is this “Google Phone”:

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.1; en-us; Nexus One Build/ERD56C) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/530.17

With a few other slightly different build numbers mixed in. “ERD71F” is apparently the latest.

Also no idea when, how, or even if Google plans to sell this device to the public, and if so, whether the public model will be carrier unlocked. And credit where credit is due: my money says Arrington is going to be proven right on this one. I suppose this Google Phone can be squared with Andy Rubin’s comments at the end of October. Rubin shot down rumors of a Google-branded phone by saying, “We’re not making hardware. We’re enabling other people to build hardware.” You could parse that as being true, insofar as that the phone is apparently made by HTC.

Roger Ebert Gives ‘Avatar’ Four Stars ★

Feel free to turn your Expectations dial up a few clicks:

It takes a hell of a lot of nerve for a man to stand up at the Oscarcast and proclaim himself King of the World. James Cameron just got re-elected.