LG’s Windows Phone 7 Prototype

At The Engadget Show there was a huge surprise, Microsoft's Aaron Woodman showed off Apollo, LG's Windows Phone 7 Series early prototype! Amazingly this seems to be the first look at Qwerty slider branded Windows Phone 7 Series device to be displayed.

Features:

• Launching: August/September 2010
• CPU: Qualcomm QSD8650; 1.3GHz
• CDMA + GSM (aka a World Phone)
• EvDO + HSDPA
• Device Size: 115 x 57.5 x 11.2 mm
• Memory (RAM/ROM): 1GB/1GB
• External Storage: MicroSD (up to 32GB)
• Screen Size/Type: 3.8-inch capacitive AMOLED “Multitouch Supported”
• Screen Resolution: WXGA 1280 x 720 px
• Camera: 10-megapixel with flash and autofocus; HD 720p video@ 30fps
• Video Support: Windows Media Video (WMV), MPEG-4 (MP4/M4V) H.264, DVR-MS4
• Audio Support: Windows Media Audio (WMA), Advanced Audio Coding (AAC-LC), FairPlay DRM, MP3
• Battery: Removable 1400 mAh
• Talk Time: Up to 7.5 hours
• Standby Time: 288 hours
• Internet Use: 4.5 hours (3G), 6.5 hours (WiFi)
• Video Playback: 10 hours
• Audio Playback: 30 hours

While the features are still in production stages, it offers you a sneak peak as to what to expect. It's a tad bit thicker than the iPhone or Nexus One. There are dedicated hardware camera, volume, and power buttons in addition to the back, home, and search buttons. It also comes with a five megapixel camera with a flash on the back, along with a headphone jack. There is not much comments or confirmation that can be made. Features might be different at the time of release as for now we wait and see.

Nexus One Is Heading To Verizon

As technology evolves  everyone tries to stay on step ahead of the competition or at least try to keep up. As you know we've been hearing for months now that Google's Nexus One is heading to Verizon. That announcement was made awhile back when they also  announced the T-Mobile version that was already floating around, until now all we've heard is that it would be out soon. Neither Google or Verizon is willing to divulge any information on the release date. “Spring 2010!” Maybe. There’s some good news the Verizon Wireless Nexus One took a giant step toward reaching consumers.

In other Verizon news they 4G  will be launched in up to 60 markets by mid 2012. They announced the move to LTE (Long Term Evolution)  back in February 2009, testing was done in one small market  half a year later.

Commercials will be fired  up for use later this year, with  future plans to launch in 30 markets before the years end. Things have definitely sped  up. Verizon has just disclosed plans to double their LTE , (Long Term Evolution) just a little  over 1 year after launch.

Here is a link from Google for those wanting to check the availability on Verizon.

Nexus One's Display Secret

If Nexus One reviewers could agree on one thing, it was that the phone has a stunning screen. But for those inky blacks and vivid colors, you're apparently paying a hefty price: I mean, look at that.
DisplayMate ran a battery of comparative tests on the Nexus One's AMOLED screen, and came away with a damning list of issues:

• The Nexus One only uses 16 bit color, which means that 'Red and Blue only have 32 possible intensity levels and Green only has 64 possible intensity levels,' as compared to the iPhone and others, which have at least 256 intensity levels for each color. Result: That horrible banding you see above.

• Android's sub-pixel rendering is great for icons and text, but terrible for images. Photos are 'rendered poorly and inaccurately, with over-saturated colors, bad color and gray-scale accuracy, large color and gray-scale tracking errors, calibration errors, lots of image noise from excessive edge and sharpness processing, and many artifacts.' Result: Blown-out areas in photographs, image noise, and general gaudiness in colorful images.

• The display's peak white brightness is oddly low. Result: It's hard to see the screen when used outdoors. (This, for what it's worth, we already knew.)

There's a lot more to digest on in DisplayMate's post, and the effect is actually worse than portrayed in their images, or ours above, since by the time you see them, they've been photographed, re-saved and redisplayed on another display. And the results aren't trivial: in the right kind of photograph, there is significant color banding on the Nexus One, where there wouldn't be on virtually any other SmartPhone.

But when we came across this story, it took most of us by surprise, because those of us that'd used a Nexus One were utterly convinced of its display's awesomeness. From our review:

The AMOLED screen is gorgeous, and all the colors pop to the point that it makes both the iPhone 3GS and the Droid look washed out. It's really, really good.

Here's the thing: This is still true. HTC and Google likely made a conscious decision to sacrifice color fidelity, outdoor viewability, and maybe even touch accuracy for a screen that, experientially speaking, blows everything else out of the water. And depending on how anal you are, this is probably fine.

The question for all the Nexus One owners is a psychological one: Now that you know about the display's flaws, do you still like your SmartPhone?

Share your thoughts, and comments with us.

Google To Buy T-Mobile? Free Nexus One, Anyone?

Bloggers and other web commenters speculate on the good and bad that could come from Google Inc  buying T-Mobile USA from its German parent. And distribute free Nexus One Android-based smartphones to the carrier's 33 million subscribers. The free smartphones, of course, would run location-aware Google mobile ads.

Sounds insane? Or not?

To be perfectly honest: Google buying T-Mobile is just speculation. In fact, some in the online world are just suggesting the move. Neither company will comment at all about the speculation.
With Google Voice and now the Nexus One, like it or not, Google is becoming a telecom operator, I believe Google views the largest U.S. operators as competitors and are obstacles to owning the mobile channel, if they purchased T-Mobile they would pick up 33 million new Google Voice users.

TmoNews, which calls itself "The unofficial T-Mobile blog" site, took that GLG nugget and added the notion that T-Mobile's 33 million subscribers should get free, Google ad  -supported Nexus One Smartphones."Imagine Google suddenly has 33 million Google Voice customers, "What is to stop them from giving away their phones ad-supported? Would people really go for phones that are free, but inundated with ads every time they make a phone call, or go to browse the web?"

Some commenters downplayed any thought of a Google-T-Mobile combination, noting that it would hurt other carriers already supporting Android phones. Honestly, I do not see Google taking any part of T-Mobile. They have too much invested in the Android product with other carriers.

Google Offers Live Support for Nexus One

Google readily admits that its Nexus One customer support at launch was lacking. However, Google says that it's committed to improving the experience as it blazes a path into the world of consumer handset sales.

Today, more than a month since the launch of the Nexus One, Google is offering owners access to a real live person via 888-48NEXUS (63987). The new support line is operational from 7:00AM to 10:00PM PST and augments Google's support forums, FAQs and email support.

Unfortunately, Google's live support line seems limited to status and shipping issues -- for live tech support you'll still have to call either HTC customer care number or T-Mobile depending upon the issue. And of course, the whole thing changes if you're an international user.

As convoluted as it all sounds, an unnamed Google spokesperson still claims that 'live phone support from Google, combined with an optimized on-line support experience, enables a superior Nexus One customer experience.'

Google Works On Voice Translation

Google has let the news out that they are working on a voice translator phone, redefining the synergy that voice translation works. Franz Och, Google's head of translation services has said the following: " "Okay, so Google has this expansive online translation service, which we all know, use, and sometimes even love. Google also has its own branded phone, with a voice recognition function that we frankly adore. So what's a brave new age company with bottomless pockets to do but try to splice the two together into some kind of omnilingual instant translator? Speech-to-speech translation -- long the exclusive plaything of fanciful sci-fi writers." He claims it should be ready within a couple of years at the rate they are moving along with it now. Problems as of right include variable pitch, tone and accents in speech will be used to each person's phone to gather data on his or her linguistic idiosyncrasies, basically making it so the more the person uses their phone's voice recognition feature, the more accurate it becomes. Sounds like Google has a lot of work to do but surely they will have a working version as they set out to soon enough. What do you guys think of the service they are working on? Hopefully it will work as intended and will be of good use to the public.

Nexus One - Built and Destroyed

Are you curious to watch Google and HTC testing Nexus One?

Check out this double feature marked by the testing and manufacturing of the device, and while the all-white facilities and assembly lines can be interesting in their own, we love nothing more than seeing just how Google and HTC stress test its labor of love.

Watch it dropped, slammed, bent, and poked - we unfortunately don't get to see any phones crack, check out the two short videos below:

Multitouch coming to Nexus One

Google is planning to release an over-the-air update to Nexus One devices to add support for the multitouch pinch-and-zoom gesture in a number of applications, like the Web browser.

Google has made a lot of progress in boosting Android's functionality to keep up with Apple's iPhone OS, but support for multitouch, which is increasingly becoming an essential capability for touchscreen devices, was one of the last major gaps for the Android.

In a statement sent to ReadWriteWeb, the search giant says that the Nexus One, with its more powerful 1Ghz Snapdragon processor, is the first Android device that can handle the load.

As per Google spokesperson -

'Unlike past devices, these phones have the processing power to deliver pinch-to-zoom, while still providing a great user experience,'

Nexus One sells only 20,000 phones its first week

Another 'iPhone killer' has failed to deliver on its hype. According to mobile analytics firm Flurry, Google's Nexus One phone sold a mere 20,000 units in its first week in the market.

The Flurry report goes on to compare the Nexus One launch with other smartphones, including the Motorola Droid, which sold 250,000 units in its first week. In its comparison to the iPhone 3GS launch, however, the report is a bit disingenuous. The iPhone 3GS was an update to an existing & wildly popular product, not a completely new product launch. In that light, the 1.6 million iPhones sold in the first week of the 3GS launch, while indeed 80 times the number of Nexus One sales, aren't a true apples-to-Apple comparison.

Instead, a better comparison may be to sales of the original iPhone. According to Apple's Q3 2007 results, released on 25 July 2007, the iPhone sold 270,000 units during the quarter. The original iPhone was released nearly a month earlier, on June 29. That works out to around 10,000 original iPhones sold per day following its 2007 release, which dovetails nicely with an early 2008 analysis of iPhone sales from Ars Technica. Far from the flabbergasting sales lead of the 3GS, the original iPhone sold about 3.5 times as many units in its 2007 launch as Nexus One did in 2010; also, the original iPhone sold for a hefty $599, even with an AT&T contract, while the Nexus One is $179 with a new T-Mobile contract ($529 without).

If anything, these numbers highlight the popularity of the Droid compared to the Nexus One. Droid sold nearly as many phones in its first week as the original iPhone sold in its first month, which is nothing to sneer at. By comparison to the Droid, however, the Nexus One launched with a whimper, not a bang.

Flurry notes, correctly, that the Nexus One launch has suffered low numbers in part because of Google's "soft launch" of the phone. Both Droid and the iPhone had aggressive marketing campaigns leading up to their respective launches, while the Nexus One has had to rely largely on industry hype and Google's own advertising. Nexus One also launched directly after the holiday season, which seems like a boneheaded move; a launch even three weeks earlier could have gained them much more robust sales. Google is also sort of "going its own" compared to Apple and AT&T's partnership with the iPhone and Verizon's vigorous hyping of Droid.

All these factors aside, both the low sales numbers and criticism of both the handset itself and Google's abysmal customer support boil down to one thing: while it may be a good phone on its own merits (or not), the Nexus One is no iPhone killer.