Android Central got their mechanical pincers on a fresh new T-Mobile Android G1 un-boxing today, and what’s the first thing they go and do? Measure it up against an iPhone 3G, of course.
Not that we can blame them. While Android’s rugged R2D2-esque looks might not make for an obvious point of comparison, they are currently the only two devices on the North American market with capacitive touch screens, and both are game-changers when it comes to the mobile platform space.
For good measure, Dieter throws it up against a bunch of other smartphones as well, including the Windows Mobile Wing and Shadow, Blackberry Pearl Flip, Blackberry Bold, the Palm Treo Pro, and the Instinct.
When Apple launched the iPhone, they teased a “breakthrough internet device” and promised us “just the internet” in our pocket. Increasingly, the internet is becoming synonymous with Google, and how does Google make it’s Microsoft-rivaling money again?
No, not search. Advertising! And now, everyone’s favorite online advertiser is getting ready to better serve up their ads on the iPhone. With MobileSafari’s monstrous browser share, who couldn’t see this one coming?
As part of our ongoing commitment to help advertisers more effectively reach their target audience, Google is currently testing a feature that gives advertisers more control over how their ads will appear on mobile devices with full Internet browsers, like the iPhone. This feature is currently in a limited beta with a small number of advertisers.
So is this a Good Thing or a Bad Thing? Ads are a fact of life. They keep many internet sites free to the end user the same way TV ads keep shows free on the networks. If we don’t want to pay a premium in cash (HBO-style), we pay it in visual clutter. Google taking the iPhone into account and — hopefully — minimizing the impact of online ads we’ll see either way?
We’re filling it under “hope for the best” for now. How about you?
Yeah, A-Day — it’s like that. No sooner did Apple announce the iPod Touch as the “funnest” ever (yet apparently didn’t tell OS X’s built in dictionary not to take issue with that obscure, yet valid usage…), then Google and T-Mobile decided to have a little, er, “fun” with it themselves:
The friendly feel of Google but funnerer, smarterer, and conecteder
No, they have to go and get with the Funnererer…er…
Well, with Windows Mobile 7 delayed until late 2009, which may be before Palm OS 2.0 even sees the light of day, and Blackberry still not even on the next generation OS radar, it’s nice to see someone taking it to Apple (even if they, with a CEO on the board of Apple, and services linked to the iPhone, may be more about complementing than competing at the moment).
Still, when the dust settles, and Steve takes the stage at Macworld 2009, we’ll just see who’s the Funnererer…est!
A-Day just goes on and on. We’re not obsessed, mind you, but for reasons outlined before, from Google’s CEO being on the Apple board, to Google services being inextricably linked into the iPhone, to Location Based (Mobile) Services and the Cloud being the Next Big Thing, this launch matters to iPhone owners almost as much as Windows Mobile (whom they’re gunning to replace) and Palm OS 2.0 (whom they may render obsolete before launch).
Curious to know more? We are! In fact, Dieter’s Meta Live Blogging the even right now over at AndroidCentral.
UPDATED: Our take, post event:
It’s not white. What’s up with that? Google is the white screen with search box. How could it be so not white?
Gmail MONSTER! Push, all sorts of management features (finally drop the beta tag??). I’d be severely jealous if, you know, Gmail weren’t so flaky for me
Complete open source platform. Stallman must be in heaven!
SIM-locked to T-Mobile. Carriers — again — FTL!
WebKit browser — not full on Chrome. Wow, if anyone had told me KHTML would become so popular, I’d have thought that about as likely as a Unix box with multi-touch sitting in my pocket right now…
This is definitely a serious play by Google to take control of the mobile market, and the advertising money that will come with it.
And most importantly, it’s a great day to be a gadget lover!
UPDATE: Our ace commenters point out this is something Google has been pushing for a while now, pre-2.1, although it may be slowly moving across the US and hasn’t been getting tons of attention everywhere yet. As the effect is likely part of the image downloads, Google can probably push new images any time they like, and not have it bound to any specific point release, so that makes the kind of sense that does. Still, pretty awesome feature!
Original post:
Eagle-eyed reader Gregory just sent this in and as Neo would surely say — WHOA!
Looks like for San Francisco, which is pretty much home turf for both Google and Apple, the built in iPhone Maps App now boasts 3D buildings! The renderings are in Map mode (Satellite and Hybrid modes have photographic buildings, after all!) and are pretty dang spiffy if you ask us.
Now, while I can see them if I search for San Fran, when I search for my hometown of Montreal, I get no such love. How about you and your city? Got 3D?
Not evil twin to theiPhoneBlog.com Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!
This week: Zilch again. Nadda. We’re too busy getting ready to cover the no doubt universe denting news Apple will unleash at “Let’s Rock” on Tuesday. And, frankly, so is the competition. Face it, they’ve been quiet as little blue-OLED mice lately.
Blackberryboss Lazeridis is all dressed up like Leo Laporte and is already lining up in San Francisco to find out what Apple’s releasing this year… so he can release it next. Palm-Top Colligan’s not releasing anything new until Nova ships sometime in 2012, and Larry and Sergey have shifted the focus off Android and onto their new Chrome browser, which we just know they’ve been running on gLinux in-house for years but is somehow only released (in what will not doubt be perpetual Beta) for Windows.
And speaking of Windows, Steve Ballmer’s off preparing an extra-special CES-sized Monkey Boy dance (YouTube it) for his first adult Keynote since Bill Gates retired to make $10,000,000 mockumentaries with Jerry Seinfeld (Wikipedia him).
No doubt they’ll return to their usually scheduled schedules next week, and so will we!
The intertubes are positively being flooded with what has to be some of the biggest browser news since Apple debuted MobileSafari on the iPhone: Google is getting in the game.
The advertising juggernaut has revealed that they’ll soon be releasing “Chrome” (Beta), built on the same Apple-contributed, open source WebKit framework that forms the foundation of Safari on OS X (and also powers Nokia and Adobe web rendering). Paul Thurrott secured the screenshots above (with accompanying analysis), and Apple Insider gets deep down into the guts of the thing, including it’s sandboxed tabs, “incognito” surf mode, and V8 Javascript engine. A Windows version will ship first, followed by Mac and Linux some point in the future.
Google, via referral fees for the search boxes built into Firefox and Safari, has bankrolled Mozilla, and to a lesser extent, Apple’s browser for years. Will creating Chrome and making a play for the browser and WebApp space turn some former allies into enemies? Google’s already begun down that path with the Android OS for handsets, and in the content space via Knol and YouTube (though they’ve thus far not managed to monetize it).
Looking for some Apple-like 360 degree spherical integration of their own, perhaps? And, as Google seems poised to become the next Microsoft, are we still safe in believing that whole “don’t be evil” motto?
So Dieter wrote up a review of Google Translate’s shiny new, iPhone optimized WebApp, and it intrigued me enough to check it out. Since I live in Montreal, French was the first language I decided to try out. Since I’m damaged and have issues that would make Lucy jack her price up to 50 cents, the very first thing I tried to translate was: “leave me alone.”
And what did Google Translate’s WebApp say “leave me alone” was in French? “leave me alone”. Oui-mais-wha?
Curious, I went from MobileSafari to desktop Safari, and what did translate.google.com tell me? “leave me alone”. German didn’t work either. Spanish and Dutch, however, did.
Kicker: “me dejen solo” from Spanish to French? You guessed it! “leave me alone”.
Well, if I ever get pounced on by our local language police, I can always try to tell them Google says “leave me alone” is perfectly acceptable French!
(For the record, Yahoo! Babel Fish actually offers a translation, if somewhat formally: “laissez-moi seul”)
Is this a known bug? I silent plea for help from an overworked Googler? A strange Babylonian plot? Or just one of many glitches in the system?
Have you run into any crazy Google mistranslations?
Digital Daily brings BOOM!ing word that Apple’s market cap has just exceeded Google’s, at $159.37 vs. $157.56.
Good on Steve Jobs and Apple. And kudos to Valleywag for saying, way back in 2007 that this would happen because “Apple knows how to design not just gadgets, but the businesses that go around them.”
We, like pretty much everyone else in the blogosphere, probably can’t help but wonder how Michael “I’d shut down Apple and give the money back to its shareholders” Dell is doing lately? But is all this market cap stuff really anything more than a seriously juicy headline? Any savvy investors reading, please enlighten me on how much more or faster this news, never mind the ever fickle and capricious dice-game that is the current market, will restore our childlike sense of wonder?
Quel surprise: Google’s Android will be delayed. It looks like Google and their hefty consortium of partners are struggling a little with getting a new mobile OS deployed across a wide array of hardware connected to all sorts of different networks. Who coulda predicted it? (Yeah, okay, basic high school chaos theory, given complexity growth and propensity for system break down and all, but other than that…)
Originally slated for second half 2008, its now looking more like fourth quarter, if not 2009. Seems like the T-Mobile launch is so Google-tention intensive, it’s pushing Sprint’s launch further back. Also — wait for it — Sprint doesn’t want to just deploy a clean Android build, they want to wall it off brand it up all personal like (couldn’t see that one coming?). Meanwhile, mega-carrier China Mobile is “running into issues” pushing its launch back as well.
To top it off, Android is more challenging to develop for, which is also a startling revelation, given the alpha/beta status of the SDK. Hitting deadlines is one thing. Hitting them through an asteroid storm of OS changes is another entirely.
The iPhone Blog merged with the Phone different site in May of 2008. Both sites were founded on a premise that comes one from one of Apple's old slogans: Think different. The iPhone Blog: for people who dare to phone different.
