The Smartphone They Said Would Never Be: the Google Nexus One (Google Branded, HTC Made)
Well, by now you’ve probably heard the news that Google has said for sometime would never happen: the Internet oligarch officially unveiled the Google Nexus One, a Google-branded mobile phone. This follows weeks of clever marketing that had the blogosphere in a tizzy. Yes, that’s right, a Google-branded piece of hardware. Of course, The Google says it wasn’t fibbing all along, as technically the phone is made by Taiwan’s HTC (which means this phone will break the instant I put it in my pocket and walk out the door, but that’s another story). But it is a Google phone; you can only buy it from Google. We in journalism have a term for this tweaking of the truth: “marketing and PR.”
Google ‘Dogfooding’ a Self-Branded, GPS-Enabled Smartphone? Or Just Testing Android 2.1?
If you’re a gadget type of person then unless you’ve been hiding under a rock on a deserted island or otherwise avoiding the Intertubes lately, then you’ve no doubt heard about the so-called Google Nexus One handset. Of course, people have been talking about a Google phone for years (ever since it gobbled up a company working on what eventually turned into Android). There are no details yet (unless you work for The Google), but the company has confirmed what was up on its official Google Mobile Blog. It is a carefully-worded statement that doesn’t actually state that a Google-branded phone is in the works (as some would have us believe), or that the handset is actually what it is being tested.
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Acer Liquid GPS Android Phone Hits Stores in UK, Nokia E72 Lands in U.S. Stores
Across the pond in Europe the much ballyhooed Acer Liquid smartphone has begun shipping. What’s notable about this handset is not the assisted-GPS or the fact that it has an Android OS (no, it’s not 2.0, but rather version 1.6, the so-called Donut), but the fact that it is one of the first smartphones built around Qualcomm’s Snapdragon mobile processor. Snapdragon is one of the latest processors for mobile applications that house multiple cores in one chip, including a CPU, GPS, and the cellular modem (no mean feat, if you no anything about electrical engineering, multiple radios, and the ensuing headaches).
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GPS-Derived Traffic Data from TeleAtlas Reveals Seattle the Most Congested U.S. City
In the past I’ve had New York City friends pooh-pooh me when I would contend that traffic on the West Coast — the San Francisco Bay Area or Los Angeles, take your pick — was worse than it was in New York City. They would contend that even traffic congestion was superior in the Big Apple, just like everything else (‘cept sushi and weather; I had them there). But now data from TomTom’s mapping company, Tele Atlas has data to back me up. In fact, NYC only ranks sixth on its list of most congested U.S. cities, behind both San Francisco and L.A.
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