Bryce on Technology

Like many other interested onlookers, I’ve been following the development of the G1 and the Android operating system pretty closely. In the Portland area, the service by AT&T is miserable which has ruled out the possibility of ever owning an iPhone as long as it is tied exclusively to that provider. Also, as I’ve said before, it’s exciting to watch the paradigm of the mobile handset evolve over the last two years.

I watched on September 23rd as T-Mobile announced that the price of the new G1 would be $200. They wanted to directly compete with the iPhone. In their official announcement, they set the price at $179 making it even more appealing.

That is until, I logged into my online T-Mobile account to get the official pricing to me when the phone does finally come out. I don’t know if their announcement was geared towards new customers (they didn’t say so) but the price is distinctly different than what they announced.

I’ll continue to watch the G1, it’s price, and how it’s affecting the mobile marketplace. For now, here’s a screen shot of my own account and the cost of upgrading. Notice that it includes the two year extension.

Telephony Android, Google Phone, Telephony

Over the last several weeks, Google has been announcing snippets of information related to their mobile phone endevor: Android.

Google announced today it will also be releasing a Android Market, a service designed in the image of the iTunes Store with YouTube functionality. An interesting market shift is taking place which could quite possibly be looked in hindsight as the great mobile revolution. First, it was the laptop, coming up next the mobile phone that acts like a laptop?

Mobile developers have been going nuts over development of iPhone applications and they have been making a mint doing so. Some reports have the Store making $1M per day. Wow. Google joins the fray today in their announcement albeit with a slightly more open source bend. They will at first accept only free applications with the paid-for apps coming at a later date.

Expanding the development of mobile apps from a few scattered developers, say, on Research In Motion’s Blackberry devices to many many developers all over the world on Android and the iPhone are setting up a potential for a Brave New World of mobile phone functionality.

Telephony, technology Android, Telephony