Over the weekend, a series of stories broke about a new phone (the Nexus One) that Google was trialling - and even planning to sell itself. We covered them, too.A story like that ticks a lot of boxes and draws out an almost Pavlovian response in gadget-watchers everywhere. Google? Yep. Phone? Yes. Bypassing phone networks? You bet.
Now, however, there are so many pieces of the story floating around that it's becoming difficult to separate the things that we know from the things we don't. The latest slew of suggestions include a potential lawsuit from the estate of Philip K Dick (because the name "Nexus One" is an homage to the replicants in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?); and that Apple is actually behind the 'Googlephone' rumour.
Google, beyond its statement about dogfooding the other day, remains tight-lipped.
So what do we actually know?
- that Google employees are trialling an experimental new handset- that it's called Nexus One, and it's made by HTC- that it's been approved by US regulators with support for GSM and T-Mobile's 3G network- that Google has registered Nexus One as a trademark in relation to phones- that Google has plans to sell it, unlocked, directly on the web
And that's about it, I think.
Other things are either speculation, not true or don't appear likely (the Dick estate doesn't own a Nexus One trademark of any sort, for example).
The thing about this swirl of ideas is that most of the elements of this are actually a case of business as usual. After all, there have been Google-branded handsets before, and the company is pushing its operating system, Android, like crazy. It's actually been heavily involved in the design of many Android handsets so far, and selling an unlocked handset is no big deal in Britain or Europe.
But it's the combination of all of these parts, in one big old juicy package, that's got everybody salivating.Read More......
0 comments:
Post a Comment