{"id":479,"date":"2008-09-24T11:26:36","date_gmt":"2008-09-24T15:26:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/?p=479"},"modified":"2008-09-24T11:29:37","modified_gmt":"2008-09-24T15:29:37","slug":"gphone-is-no-iphone-slayer-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/2008\/09\/gphone-is-no-iphone-slayer-yet\/","title":{"rendered":"GPhone is No iPhone Slayer… Yet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google announced its first foray into the smartphone market yesterday with T-Mobile’s HTC Dream, which uses the Android Mobile OS.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I honestly have to say I’m not particularly impressed with what I’ve seen so far.\u00a0 If the iPhone is the sexy MacBook Air of the mobile world, the Dream feels like the equivalent of the One Laptop Per Child laptops: interesting enough to play with for awhile, but not enticing enough to buy.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Part of that, admittedly, is the marketing.\u00a0 In typical Google style, it looks like the marketing was done by a group of engineers.\u00a0 All of the images I’ve of the Dream’s Home screen have big, blocky, low resolution icons and an enormous analog clock that looks like the standard UNIX KDE clock<\/a>.\u00a0 Not so sexy.\u00a0 It’s not clear who they’re trying to market the phone to.\u00a0 Other software engineers?\u00a0 My grandmother?\u00a0 The blind?<\/p>\n

Of course, these are only initial ignorant knee-jerk reactions.\u00a0 I haven’t actually held one in my hand.<\/p>\n

All cheap shots aside, I have to hand it to Google for their commitment to keeping the platform Open Source.\u00a0 Unlike Apple’s application store, the Google mobile app marketplace will remain open and unmoderated.\u00a0 Any developer will be able to post and sell their application and any user will be able to download and install whatever they want.\u00a0 No restrictions.\u00a0 If I were Apple, I’d start to worry that this would be highly attractive to the growing pool of slighted iPhone developers looking for greener pastures in which to develop.<\/p>\n

And in the end, Google seems to have a healthy attitude about all of this.\u00a0 They know they’re not going to take over the market overnight.\u00a0 They’re prepared to lose money on this for awhile.\u00a0 And really, as noted by Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Google benefits from more users accessing the web (and using their search engine) on their mobile device, regardless of who made the handset.<\/p>\n

So no.\u00a0 It’s no iPhone killer.\u00a0 It’s ugly as hell.\u00a0 But it has prospects.<\/p>\n

I’m eager to see how all of this pans out.<\/p>\n

Read more about all Google’s unveiling on NYTimes<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Google announced its first foray into the smartphone market yesterday with T-Mobile’s HTC Dream, which uses the Android Mobile OS. I honestly have to say I’m not particularly impressed with what I’ve seen so far.\u00a0 If the iPhone is the sexy MacBook Air of the mobile world, the Dream feels like the equivalent of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[197,70,195,196,26],"class_list":["post-479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-nerdiness","tag-android","tag-google","tag-gphone","tag-htc-dream","tag-iphone"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":483,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479\/revisions\/483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}