gPhone outed as "Android"

Thrax

When cellular progress goes "Boink."

The <strong>EVIL RUMORPLEX</strong> has been in a tizzy over the last 8 months, pontificating about the second coming of the Almighty Google in a new market: Mobile phones. The gPhone was supposed to be an end-all, be-all solution for the billions of users being raked over the coals by their evil contractual overlords (The carriers).

Particularly in the United States, where the major mobile carriers smell of sulfur, sleep on beds of spikes and incite tears in small children in passing, the gPhone was to be salvation. This [was] the key to a new order. This code disk [meant] freedom.

Instead, the gPhone platform now known as Android amounts to little more than a convenient API that marries a new OS with apps, backed by a pittance of second-rate mobile firms. Android tastes strongly of customization, has a fresh, licensey aroma that smells of openness-ness, which finishes in the faintest hint of disappointment.

See you at the boring end of 2008.

primesuspect

"meh"

CB

I still think it's neat.

Garg

I don't think T-Mobile and Sprint are second-rate mobile firms. I've been planning to switch to T-Mobile when my Verizon contract is up next year. Maybe I can get a phone with Android, and maybe even Android will reduce the cost of my phone. At the very least, the interface will have to be better than the awful software that comes on Verizon phones.

Sure, it's no gPhone, but I honestly didn't think we were going to get one.

Sledgehammer70

Verizon is the devil....

Thrax

Gargoyle wrote:

I don't think T-Mobile and Sprint are second-rate mobile firms. I've been planning to switch to T-Mobile when my Verizon contract is up next year. Maybe I can get a phone with Android, and maybe even Android will reduce the cost of my phone. At the very least, the interface will have to be better than the awful software that comes on Verizon phones.

Sure, it's no gPhone, but I honestly didn't think we were going to get one.

Sprint is a wreck of a mobile carrier, and T-Mobile (Despite being owned by mobile giant Deutsche Telekom) is only the fourth largest national US carrier. "Wow! Fourth!" you say. I know, fourth sounds pretty good, except the distance between fourth and third is more than 100%, and it's more than 140% (In customers) to first place.

T-Mobile is very small when compared to the bigger players who are unsurprisingly absent.

Garg

True, it's pretty small comparatively. I had a much better experience as a customer with them than I'm having with Verizon, though. And Sprint is pretty craptastic. I'm just glad that companies we've actually heard of are supporting it.

Leonardo

To me, the list of supporting carriers and tech companies that will support the Gphone software (platform?) seemed pretty impressive for a startup. I think this will get traction and enable the smaller players, like T Mobile, to integrate better, just like Windows allowed small hardware manufacturers a standard to rally around for common drivers. (poor metaphor perhaps, but I tried)

mas0n

These are not the droids I'm looking for.

RADA

Thrax wrote:

Sprint is a wreck of a mobile carrier, and T-Mobile (Despite being owned by mobile giant Deutsche Telekom) is only the fourth largest national US carrier. "Wow! Fourth!" you say. I know, fourth sounds pretty good, except the distance between fourth and third is more than 100%, and it's more than 140% (In customers) to first place.

T-Mobile is very small when compared to the bigger players who are unsurprisingly absent.

Of course T-Mobile used to be Voicestream. VS was great company, till *Douche, I mean, Deutsche Telekom took over. Then they became just like all the other craptastic wireless companies out there.



* Disclaimer: This play on words in meant to illustrate how I feel about this company, not to incite hostility towards any of our German friends on the site....