Google allowing tethering apps for non-T-Mobile users

After performing a mass sweep of tethering applications from the Android Market earlier this week, Google have backtracked. Rather than a total ban, their suggestion is to leave tethering software available to “users outside the T-Mobile US network”:

“We inadvertently unpublished your application for all mobile providers; if you like, we can restore your app so that all Android Market users outside the T-Mobile US network will have access to your application” Google statement to WiFi Tether for Root Users developer.”

It looks as though, as we suggested, Google has a filtering system which allows them to limit Android Market content depending on carrier. It’s arguable whether that’s good news or bad; one perspective is that at least developers can promote Android software that, while perhaps falling foul of some carriers’ Terms of Service (ToS), would still be usable by those with unlocked devices on different networks.

However, a different view might maintain that by giving in to carrier pressure, Google has set a precedent which could significantly impact future software, such as VoIP apps. The layering of ToS and distribution agreements involving users, carriers and Google themselves makes keeping track of which apps will be permitted, whether partially or totally, difficult, and it’ll only get worse as more carriers sign up their own Android devices.

(Via Androidcommunity )

T-Mobile bringing the BlackBerry Curve 8900 in February

Sprint’s now officially holding up the tail end of the BlackBerry train in the States (though hopefully not for long) now that T-Mobile has announced that the thoroughly modern Curve 8900 is hitting the lineup. Like the 8320 before it, the 8900 does WiFi for UMA-based HotSpot calling service and a 3.5mm headphone jack, but the similarities end there; besides arguably becoming the hottest BlackBerry in RIM’s stable, the 8900 features a 3.2-megapixel cam with image stabilization and a glorious 480 x 360 display that’ll put anything shy of a Storm to shame. Look for it next month — T-Mobile hasn’t committed to a date, though we have no reason to doubt the 11th rumor at this point.

A full review of Google’s Android G1 Phone

The T-Mobile G1 Google smartphone, designed by Google and made by HTC, remains firmly in the shadow of the iPhone—for now. The phone, which goes on sale next week in the US and next month in Britain, was released too early. The HTC hardware and Android OS that powers it lack the polish and depth of even the iPhone 1.0 in most respects. It’s not a bad phone, but the software and hardware needed more time in the oven to bring them to a golden brown crispness.

The G1 would come off much better if it wasn’t competing with the 3G iPhone and iPhone OS 2.1. Admittedly, it’s not clear that Google would have been able to sign up carriers back when the original iPhone was released back in the pre-3G and pre-App Store days, back when Google assembled the three dozen firms that form the Open Handset Alliance, without the iPhone as leverage. While Android’s development predates the release of the original iPhone, phones based on the OS will be pushed onto the market in part because of Apple’s exclusive carrier deals; carriers left out need an alternative.

The G1 is burdened with a lot of issues that have little to do with the phone itself, but we’ll see if we can get past that to explore the general inadequacy of the phone.

The hardware
You notice the G1’s ordinariness as soon as you unpack the phone, which comes wrapped in a small, neatly designed box. The cables are the kind you find accompanying any phone, which somehow makes the G1 appear bland even before use.

Android’s Maps program integrates multiple Google Maps views, and uses the GPS receiver for position.

The G1 guides you through a simple and well-designed setup process for creating accounts and filling in basic parameters. Oddly, despite the inclusion of a WiFi radio, there’s no option to add existing WiFi accounts during setup. Instead, the phone defaults to using T-Mobile’s limited 3G network, available in a few dozen cities right now. (Both data plans for the G1 include unlimited T-Mobile HotSpot use, which includes several thousand locations in the US)

Previews of the phone, produced by reviewers at national publications (like Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal) led me to expect a somewhat better piece of gear than what the G1 turned out to be. The G1 has a slightly rubberized case that’s comfortable in the hand, but the fit and finish isn’t all there.

The phone’s slide-out keyboard doesn’t have a smooth motion—it slams into place. The display portion wobbles slightly and doesn’t lock solidly into open or closed positions. The bottom portion of the phone, when in closed portrait mode, has a slight raise and tilt, and feels exactly right. HTC crammed five buttons and a trackball nubbin into that area.

When butterflied open, the raised and tilted portion winds up on the right side of the keyboard, and irritates while you type. The keyboard is quite nice, with all the letters and numbers available, along with keys for period and the @-sign, plus a dedicated Google search key. It’s quite similar to a one-letter-per-key BlackBerry.

Ports and buttons seem to be scattered around the phone, based on where they happen to fit, rather than having been placed through a well-thought-out design; HTC may have based this on a previous model to produce it so fast. Owners of HTC phones may be used to having volume up/down buttons in a reasonable place (the upper left side of the phone in portrait mode), but the compact USB jack is at the bottom, the camera button at the lower right, and the microSD slot cover is partly hidden when the phone isn’t opened.

There’s no standard headphone jack either, although the unit comes with a set of uncomfortable microphone/earbuds that use HTC’s proprietary USB audio connector to hook into the phone. An ungainly USB-to-2.5mm adapter is available, but not included.

The earbuds have good audio quality when listening to music. There’s a large rectangular bolus in the cable with a thumbnail for adjusting volume, a button for controlling call and music behavior, and a built-in microphone.

In use, the G1 doesn’t feel overly large unless you’re holding an iPhone in the other hand. But the slide-open keyboard makes the G1 more practical for large quantities of typing. As a 100wpm touch-typist, I’m still uncomfortable with the iPhone’s glass keyboard; I could type well on the G1 keyboard immediately.

A built-in speaker produces decent sound and can pump out at extremely high volume. The speaker is on the back, so it’s easy to muffle if you’re playing back YouTube or using it as a speaker phone when resting it on a table.

The out-of-the-box brightness was far too dim, obviously set to about 35 percent of maximum to preserve battery life. At its full brightness, video playback from YouTube was far more attractive.

The built-in three-megapixel camera produces extremely sharp, high-quality photos, even at a range of a few inches. Its auto-focus and exposure adjustments are fantastic. A third-party bar-code scanner had no trouble instantly recognizing and decoding a photo of a UPC printed on a book, for instance. However, the best hardware feature of a smartphone should not be its camera.

A photo taken with the G1’s camera.

The phone comes with a 1 GB microSD card installed, which is used by default to store photos, music, and other items. Plugging the phone into a computer via USB mounts the card, and its contents can be copied without special software. This is a meager amount of storage compared with the iPhone’s base 8 and 16GB models, but a 4GB microSD card can be had for as little as $14; T-Mobile maybe should have opted to eat a few dollars and include that amount of storage.

Although I didn’t have a G1 for long enough to test its battery performance during long phone calls or other typical drains, but the battery life seemed adequate. The unit lasted about a day with heavy data use, downloads, and video playback from YouTube, although that was with the inadequate default brightness.

Google’s GPhone Challenger

The first smartphone powered by Google’s open source Android operating system – the G1 – was in one sense a big success even before it went on sale this week through Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile USA mobile unit. According to some reports, 1.5m T-Mobile G1 handsets were preordered by buyers eager to get hold of a device and an operating system that promise to deliver another boost to the consumer smartphone market. It goes on sale in the UK shortly.

I have been testing the G1, made by Taiwan-based HTC, for several weeks. A number of shortcomings aside, it is a true rival to Apple’s iPhone and other smartphone devices aimed at the consumer market.

The G1’s most noticeable feature is its design. It may lack the immediate, simple aesthetic appeal of the iPhone, but it does pack both a big 3.2 inch touch screen and a full mini Qwerty keyboard that slides out of one side: and it all fits into a case that is only slightly thicker than Apple’s device.

The G1’s physicalkeyboard will particularly appeal to users who write and send a lot of mobile e-mail, text messages or instant messages and who, like me, find the virtual keyboard built into the iPhone difficult to use.

The other unusual design feature is that it is angled at one end to move the microphone a little closer to the users’s mouth during voice calls. It also positions the BlackBerry-style trackerball conveniently under the right thumb when you rotate the handset to the “landscape” position to use the keyboard and browse the internet.

Aside from the trackerball, there are five buttons below the screen. The familiar green and red start/stop call buttons, along with its good sound quality, make the G1 an appealing handset for ordinary voice calls. There is a home screen button, a return button to take you back one step, and a menu button that brings up a set of context-sensitive “soft” keys at the bottom of the touch screen.

Navigating the G1 and its features is easy but not quite as intuitive as the iPhone.

In spite of its sophisticated technology credentials, the G1 is clearly aimed at the broad mass market rather than technology aficionados or corporate users. It is not designed to synchronise with corporate e-mail systems and does not permit users to save or edit Microsoft Office documents.

W hen new G1 owners power up the handset, they create or sign into a Google account and then the phone is automatically sychronised with Google’s web-based Gmail, calendar and contact information. Users can also set the phone up to download and send e-mail from other non-Gmail personal e-mail accounts. Gmail users can read Microsoft Word and Excel attachments, but cannot edit or save them.

Appropriately for a device that Google believes will help bring the mobile internet to the mass market, the G1’s web browser is both fast and excellent – it is in fact based on the same technology as the Safari browser built into the iPhone and Google’s recently launched Chrome web browser.

In my tests, web pages loaded quickly and I could zoom easily by tapping a screen based icon.

The G1’s home screen features four icons providing access to basic applications – a dialler, contacts list, the web browser and Google Maps. The latter takes full advantage of the G1’s built-in GPS satellite navigation technology and supports one of my favourite features – Google Maps street view that changes as you turn around, like a compass needle.

From the home screen, users can open a full screen of application icons that provide access to all the included applications such as alarm clock, camera, e-mail, IM and music.

Surprisingly, the big gap in the G1’s features is support for music and other multimedia content where it is easily outclassed by the iPhone and the latest BlackBerrys. The G1 comes with an integrated music p

Meet the T-Mobile G1

Uh, c’mon guys — this is a little ridiculous. Now typically, you want to keep this sort of thing under wraps until the day of your event, but it seems like the cats and kittens at T-Mobile can’t contain themselves. Yes, you’re looking at the first official product shot of the G1 Android phone ever. Enjoy it.

Update: TmoNews has just uncovered new specs and info on the phone. Here’s what they’ve got so far: the phone is 4.6 x 2.16 x 0.63 inches, weighs 5.6 ounces, features a 480 x 320 HVGA display, sports 3G (obviously), GPS, has a 3.1-megapixel camera, supports up to 8GB of memory (though no format is mentioned), and will feature 5 hours of talktime with 130 hours of standby. Strangely, the phone won’t do video capture (what?), won’t have stereo Bluetooth, will require a Gmail account, and won’t be sold at stores outside of a 2-5 mile radius of T-Mobile’s 3G coverage areas. That last bit sounds a little odd to us, but we’re guessing a lot of the functionality of this device will be shot in non-3G regions.

About G Phone’s 10 Things That We Did Not Expect Until the Launch Event

Now that the press event held by T-Mobile in New York is over (and they promise we’ll be able to watch the video from the event again later at the official website) I must admit that we have seen quite a number of surprises and unpredicted things about G Phone. There were good surprises when things we expected actually appeared to be better or something we did not expect at all was introduced. But there were also bad surprises when something we really hoped would happen was not even mentioned.

So let’s forget about our guesses and expectations – the device has been officially introduced and everything is more or less clear about it now. So what are the surprises?

Price – $179

This is no doubt the biggest surprise. The price announced today is lower than that of iPhone and lower than what we expected for T-Mobile G1 – $199. Instead they chose a lower price for the device – $179. I suspected pricing would be where Google, HTC, and T-Mobile would make some big surprise and this is exactly what happened with the price clearly intended for G1 to be competitive against Apple iPhone in pricing as well.

But there’s one unpleasant exception here: this price is only valid for new T-Mobile subscribers while existing ones will have to pay $299 for the upgrade. (UPDATE: $179 price is valid for all T-Mobile customers that are not bound by an existing contract.) But it does not stop T-Mobile subscribers from ordering the phones from the website now that the pre-ordering is open for them.

So while HTC CEO at the press conference constantly repeated his mantra about the power of mobile internet and the opportunities it offers to consumers, it is quite obvious that this low price is not about making mobile internet really affordable but about grabbing a market share from Apple and possibly Blackberry as well.

The device price is accompanied with two options for data plans (both affordable but anyway required on top of voice plan): $25 for unlimited internet and limited messaging or $35 for unlimited plan.

Official shipment date – October 22

We had two shipment dates predicted in the blogosphere – October 17 and October 20 with some people already making plans about when exactly they will need to arrive to their local T-Mobile stores to grab their G1 phones. Now the official date is announced and it is October 22, Wednesday, almost a month from now.

Existing T-Mobile customers can actually pre-order the phone on the website (for $299) to have it delivered when it is available in stores.

Anyway while we have not guessed the exact date, at least the expectation to see the phone selling in October proves to be the right one.

Quite reasonable launch dates on markets other than the US

The phone is scheduled to be launched in the UK in November and it will appear in other select European markets next year as well. So unlike with iPhone we won’t have to wait for ages to grab a device for ourselves as well – the main limitation to consider will be availability of 3G network that is the pre-requisite for G Phone to perform best (with WiFi connectivity winning in quality over both 2G and 3G, we are told).

And while there are no details about carriers HTC and Google will work with in Europe, we will sure start to get details very soon with the launch dates imminent.

Browser not exactly Chrome

We used to suspect that the primary purpose of Google’s Chrome browser would be for use on Android operating system. But what we have seen at the presentation as the browser is not actually Chrome and it hardly even resembles Chrome at all. So while we are told the browser can be dubbed Chrome mini, it has very few visual (or functional from what I’ve noticed) resemblances to Chrome at all – not even the icon we associate the browser with.

The similarity is that both browsers – the desktop Chrome and the mobile G1 browser – are also based on the same WebKit rendering engine. So this guess was also wrong – the browser is not exactly Chrome which must mean that Android and Chrome may have two very different destinations in the end.

No free email

We really hoped it would be true and we would see free access to Gmail on T-Mobile G1 as rumors had it. Better yet, I suggested access to all ad-supported Google applications could be free for users (and users could still opt for ad-free paid versions if they did not want any ads on their mobile devices). But no, this is a disappointment but it is here – no free access anywhere with a data plan required. But since the data plan is a requirement anyway and both options for a data plan stipulate for unlimited web usage, I guess it does not make sense to have access to any applications preferential and free – since you will have to buy a data plan and it will have to be unlimited anyway.

No Amazon videos

We already knew that the camera of the device would not support video capturing but we hoped that there would be some non-YouTube videos available for download by default – and the candidate to provide those videos was Amazon mobile application we heard rumors about. We suggested that a good idea would be to have Amazon’s Video On Demand service as part of the mobile Amazon application so that users could purchase and download movies and TV shows from Amazon when on the go. Unfortunately we are not seeing this happening and Amazon application will only be used to purchase mp3 music to play on the device.

Super accessibility of search

Google is a search company (at its core, at least), after all, so they have made sure that search is easily accessible on the device with just one key on the keyboard. This key will initiate the search process depending on what you do with the device at any given moment – for example, if you browse the internet, it will launch internet search for you while when you browse your contacts, it will start searching within your contacts instead.

Presence building using Gmail

At the press conference a new concept has been introduced by Google – online presence building. Gmail application along with Google Talk application running on G1 Phone (both the defaults) will work together to ensure continuous online presence for any user where you won’t have to be away any more.

While we don’t have details for now, it sure sounds intriguing – and a little scary as well. We’ll see what the concept actually looks like when in operation.

DRM-free content only

A user will only be able to use the device to play DRM-free music and videos. I believe it is part of the partnership with Amazon for music sales and an additional way to compete with iPhone with its default iTunes functionality.

Clear targeting at the general feature phones market, not smartphones only

This one may be the last (since it was the one I noted last) but it looks like the most important one for the market. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin made an unexpected and stunning appearance at the presentation themselves to share their own (understandably positive only) experience of using G1 phones. But the intriguing part was Larry describing how he admires the market of mobile devices with 3 billion existing devices and 1 billion new devices per year. And he did not mention his admiration with the size of smartphones market or anything similar at all. I believe these words are a clear indication that Google is not planning to limit Android for smartphones market to compete with iPhone and Blackberry only – the bigger game is in the regular feature phones that are purchased in much higher numbers.

Basically I think we should expect cell phone manufacturers announcing partnerships with Google one by one now that the first device is announced and almost ready to be shipped.

These are a few things that surprised me (some in a good – others in a bad way) at today’s press conference where T-Mobile introduced the long-awaited and much-hyped already G1 T-Mobile phone with Google. I am sure we will start getting more information now that the companies will be open for comments during the month preceding the shipment date. But even though we have heard some disappointed voices on Twitter already, we have also seen people pre-ordering the device when they can – and this must be a good indication of a good start of the marketing campaign that T-Mobile promises will be the largest campaign for a mobile device it ever had. We’ll see how it works but for now we have all the reasons to be excited.