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You can hear me featured on the Meetmobility podcast episode 45 with JKKmobile, Sasha Pallenberg and Steve Paine available at http://meetmobility.com/2010/03/12/meetmobility-podcast-45-cream-of-the-expo-cebit-2010-roundup/
I talk about the Archos 7 Home Tablet, Gigabyte’s Android-based e-ink e-reader, Android on set-top-boxes as well as my 10″ Firstview VIA ARM powered Android laptop which I will post a video-review of here one of these next few days.
According to ARM CEO Warren East, the Netbook category is expected to explode to cover 90% of the laptop market over the next several years.
And that if Microsoft doesn’t want to provide a version of Windows 7 or Windows 8 for ARM Powered laptops, then that Linux based OSes will do just fine.
I’m hoping to see following specs in mass market ARM Powered laptops soon:
– ARM Cortex A8/A9
– All screen sizes from 4″ to 15″
– Android and Chrome OS combination, provide optimized Chrome browser yet still support Android notifications and applications
– HDMI output
– Pixel Qi 3Qi screen for outdoors readability and 50 hour battery runtime
– Capacitative touch-screen Tablet swivel form factor
– Less than 1kg weight
– Pricing: less than $200 unlocked without any contracts needed
I’m really looking forward to see more of these hopefully as soon as during the Mobile World Congress from February 15-18th in Barcelona, where I plan to go an film 50 videos to be posted here on http://ARMdevices.net, so please do subscribe to my RSS feed to keep up to date.
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When the OLPC project’s XO laptops are used in schools, the results are transforming education around the world. It’s getting children excited about school. It’s getting attendance to increase by 100 percent, which it does in most places where OLPC has deployed laptops, where more girls go to school, where the truancy drops to zero, where children take laptops home and teach their parents how to use them.
The One Laptop Per Child engineers are working on an ARM Powered XO 1.75 laptop which is going to be released within a year from now. My guess is that they might be optimizing it for using the Marvell Armada 610 or 510 processor.
The OLPC’s official power consumption target is 2W of power consumption. Though I wonder, is 2W of power consumption really the goal? Not even lower?
For example, the Pixel Qi screen is supposed to consume only 0.1W when backlight is turned off, once Pixel Qi has optimized refresh rates and other details which they have said they will be able to do over the next few months. The whole ARM Processor System on Chip should not consume nearly any power at all when nothing is moving on the screen, when the student for example is just reading an e-book. Then how low really can the power consumption go? Shouldn’t 0.2W power consumption in offline e-reader mode be a realistic goal? Thus shouldn’t the child get 100 minutes of use for 1 minute of cranking?
Since most of the children served by laptops from the OLPC project live off the grid, and may not get electricity for many years, getting the power consumption down on the laptops is one of OLPC’s main engineering goals. This and lowering the cost of the laptops to below $100 per laptop are the main goals of the OLPC project.
I’d like to see all the major ARM Processor makers announce that they will support OLPC in that goal, so that the XO 1.75 may not only be based on the Marvell processor, but that other processors will be optimized for it as well. All ARM Powered laptops shall point towards the same goals in my opinion, also in terms of software optimizations. We need fast and smooth web browsers, have Google and everyone else focus on optimizing the web browsing speed using the Chrome browser. While having everyone focus on one OS for all ARM Powered laptops may be a good idea eventually, until we figure out which OS are the best for which use, having easy multi-boot menus work and utilizing a minimal of extra storage space to ship laptops with multiple choices of Linux OS such as shipping ARM Powered XO laptops with Fedora based Sugar OS, with a Gnome desktop alternative, and with eventually an alternative based on a combination of Android and Chrome OS may be the best solution.
Free wireless broadband is also a priority. Sure a combination of existing cellular, ADSL, Fiber and WiFi Mesh networks of the OLPC project can already achieve a lot. But perhaps the generalization of use of 700mhz spectrum for wireless broadband all around the world will help lower the cost of deploying ubiquituous wireless broadband, especially in countries that deploy the OLPC project without having pre-existing broadband infrastructures in place. The TV spectrum needs to be used for free wireless broadband for all.
Rich countries need to prioritize the OLPC project in deploying revolutionary education using computers and Internet technology all over the world.
Source: smartplanet.com
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The default Android web browser is really awesome in terms of speed, it even works amazingly fast on the ARM9 Powered web browser of the Hivision PWS700CA that I tested in my video-review a few days ago. Though for Laptop form factors, also known as ARM Powered Netbooks or Smartbooks, and for Android Tablets like the Archos 5 Internet Tablet that has a HDMI output and supports USB and Bluetooth keyboards and mice, the default Android web browser might not be enough.
This is why the support of the full desktop-like experience using Chrome and Firefox web browsers within Android are really going to be nice. Perhaps the June 2009 release of the Native Android SDK can help developers reach this goal.
The Mozilla team is showing this screenshot of Firefox running within Android (check also Mozilla’s wiki entry on Android: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Android):
Since Google is now working on releasing the full Chrome OS for ARM Powered devices, perhaps it would make sense to take the source code of that Chrome web browser for ARM, and make it into an Android application. This way on a Pocketable Android tablets or phones the default Android web browser would still be used, but when in HDMI output mode to a HDTV and when using USB or Bluetooth keyboards and mice, the Chrome browser or Firefox would thus be the browser of choice.
I think it would be nice as well if it was possible to provide a full speed browser experience even on cheap ARM Powered Android devices that come with little RAM memory such as only 128MB or RAM, still enable the use of unlimited amounts of opened tabs by somehow perhaps saving the state of each tab into ROM memory and be able to quickly in few milliseconds be able to pull that back into RAM memory when the specific tab is selected.
On the other hand, I also think it would make sense to support all Android applications within Chrome OS, thus this might mean that eventually Android and Chrome OS will merge.
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If the leaked pricing rumor of £149 for the Archos 7 Internet Tablet is correct, this may mean that it will be sold for only $199 in the USA. Consider that European retail pricing always includes around 20% VAT taxes which are not included in US retail pricing.
In September 2009, Archos did announce that they would upgrade to 1ghz processors, thus I expect it may be the new Texas Instruments OMAP3640 that is a 45nm process or a 1ghz version of the current OMAP3440 processor.
The cheaper $199 Archos 7 Internet Tablet, means the Archos 5 Internet Tablet will probably also be available $50 to $100 cheaper. It is currently sold at $249 at Radio Shack. Thus by March, pricing for the Archos 5 Internet Tablet (8GB) may be lowered to around $179 (I am speculating here).
It’d be really nice to see Archos come during the next few months with more screen sizes from 4.3″, 4.8″, 7″, 8.9″ and even 10.1″ Android Tablets. I speculate on what the overall pricing of those may be in this post: http://archosfans.com/2010/01/29/my-recommendations-on-archos-cheap-android-tablet-revolution/
Most importantly, if full Google Marketplace can officially be supported on larger screened Android Tablets, and if all bugs are fixed soon for very stable full Android and VOIP usage, I think this positions Archos and the whole Android Tablet segment as a really good value alternative to the $499-$829 Apple iPad.
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Here’s an update on my August 2nd 2008 wish-list for features of my next HD Camcorder:
Since the beginning of 2008, I have been using my Sanyo HD1000 camcorder to post about 1000 videos in 9mbit/s 720p HD quality (h264 baseline Sanyo recordings) to Youtube and before mid-2008 using 3.5mbit/s DivX 720p HD to my server when I posted all my technology videos at http://techvideoblog.com. In 2005-2007, I was using my old Sony HDR-HC1 for my 1080i HDV recordings to video-blog in 3.5mbit/s DivX 720p and Google Video.
I consider myself to be a professional video-blogger, thus I really would like to see the HD camcorder industry to include video-blogger features in next generation camcorders.
I would like to see Sanyo release a compact pocketable HD3000 model in the next couple of months, with following features:
– built-in WiFi upload to Youtube HD, like the Eye-Fi but WiFi uploads should be fast at full WiFi speed with resume of uploads supported and very easy to use user interface in the camera to manage uploads and automatic-uploads.
– built-in Android touch screen interface (for editing titles/descriptions), with USB-host or Bluetooth for keyboard text input to edit titles/descriptions
– faster/better H264 encoding quality per bitrate with more lower bitrate options such as 4mbit/s 720p (which should be at least as good quality as 9mbit/s encoding on the older Sanyo HD1000) for quicker upload to Youtube.
– Wireless microphone using Bluetooth or RF built-in would be nice as well.
– Live WiFi streaming with overlay chat API for Qik/Ustream would be nice as well while it also records HD versions.
– If possible, it should record both 4mbit/s 720p or 1080p 8mbit/s for Youtube and 20mbit/s 1080p for archiving.
– It should support automatic editing of intro/outros in all videos. Thus I could record a new intro/outro for each new event and it should just automatically edit that in.
– Let me pause recordings to thus edit videos while I film and let me join/cut videos within the camcorder faster than on HD1000
– It should let me point to a transparent PNG file to use as Watermark in all videos by default, the Watermark should be applied while filming thus not loosing any quality in re-encoding later.
– Version with built-in SIM card slot for HSDPA features would be nice, constant overlay live IRC chat would be nice to receive live questions and suggestions from live viewers
– 4.3″ or 4.8″ screen would be nice as viewfinder compared to the 2.7″ of the HD1000.
– Built-in 2.5″ or 1.8″ hard drive compartment would be nice for adding built-in storage upwards 500GB.
– Otherwise a second built-in SDHC card slot would be nice.
– Some clever system to swap battery while filming without having to interrupt the filming would be impressive.
– Built-in wide-angle, I film everything in wide-angle so I’d rather not have to buy an add-on wide-angle lense. Yet it’s ok if Sanyo make the lense look wide an cool by default (small lenses don’t look as professional).
Dear Camcorder industry, if you want to differentiate your HD Camcorder with good optics (better than a basic Flip camcorder), and not let Smartphones get HD camcorder functions built-in before we see some of these things. These features are it! Once you have got these features integrated, you can start aiming towards Quad-HD resolution recording for cheap if the HDTV LCD industry can follow as well, instead of making those ridiculous 3D HDTV.
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Wow, I beat my record for the amount of videos that I filmed and have posted from a 4-day consumer electronics conference. I uploaded 72 videos to Youtube from CES 2010 in HD 1280×720 9mbit/s quality. And I am still not done. I still have at least 2 more videos that I can think of that I forgot to upload yet (one because I had to edit it) which I will get to upload during the next couple of days as soon as I find them.
22 of those videos have so far reached audiences of more than 1000 viewers, which I think is lower than I would have hoped for. I did not have any time during my trip in the USA to try to promote my best videos for trying to get them embedded on the big technology news blogs. And also, the big technology news blogs like Engadget and Gizmodo had their own armies of 20+ bloggers each doing all the coverage that they needed. Engadget for example brags about having published 700 posts during CES (I didn’t count them), that wouldn’t leave much space for them to think about embedding any other small video-bloggers videos even if those might be better than their own ones.
My new site http://ARMdevices.net is also only just launched right now before CES, I need to work on optimizing the features, especially the comments and social networking aspects of it. Please do subscribe to my RSS feed if you do use that kind of technology so you will automatically know when I post new awesome videos.
My plan is now to film my next extensive consumer electronics show video coverage at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona from 15-18th February, where Google might be releasing Nexus Two, Three and Four, so definitely check back for that!
Until then, I plan to release some awesome video reviews of amazing new products. I have right here the Android based Hivision Mininote laptop, it is absolutely amazing and I have been preparing to film my extensive video review of it to be published imminently. I should hurry up as I am probably one of the very few very lucky people on this planet with a real ARM Powered Android laptop. I also got a Pocketbook 360 e-ink e-reader which may well be the most pocketable e-ink e-reader on the market, I will soon post a high quality video review of that one. I just got a Huawei e5830 Mifi adaptor, awesome to always stay connected to the Internet, I will test VOIP Android applications on Archos 5 Internet Tablet using its new Donut-based Android firmware 1.7.33 and the hacked Google Marketplace using it to see if that can fully replace a mobile phone.
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I posted this comment to Avner Ronen’s announcement about the upcoming Boxee payments system:
It was nice to film Boxee Box at CES.
And congratulations to them with all those people thinking they were the best of the show.
I wish the Boxee project good luck in revolutionizing the TV world. It’s a big deal though, I think that industry is not only a multi-trillion dollar industry worldwide, they also basically control the minds of people. TV stations are decisive in elections, they make or break politicians and one cannot become famous without TV.
While I am amazed to see all Boxee’s cool TV remote interfaces work so smoothly on an ARM Powered Tegra2 device, I’d like to see confirmation that Boxee Box definitely support everything and all codecs on that platform. If they really will support all the same content sources such as Youtube HD, Hulu, all the podcasts, BitTorrent RSS and more.
Since Boxee is building an open system, perhaps the best way to implement pay-per-view would be to implement an open platform that not only supports Boxee payments but could support any other payment system where Boxee might not even see 1% of the transaction revenues. It’d probably be weird though for Boxee to be that open even on the payment opportunity side of things.
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As you would know from checking out my other fansite http://archosfans.com I am a fan of the 4.8″ 800×480 resolution screens. I just wonder why we still haven’t seen any so called “smart phone” with such screen size and pixel densities. I posted this opinion at crunchgear:
5″ is about the perfect sized screen at WVGA resolution because it fits in mostly all pockets and provides enough resolution with large enough pixels to provide near full PC-like web browsing and movie watching experience. I also think that it can provide near desktop-like applications experiences.
Normally, even with a kick-stand like on the Archos, you will hold the 5″ Tablet at about half arms length from your eyes, while the laptop screen usually is nearly at twice the distance from your eyes down on your lap or on a table further away (also because you have the keyboard and mouse pad).
So basically, the Archos 5 Internet Tablet pretty much provides you 75% the full resolution experience of web browsing on a Laptop and 75% the experience of watching a movie on a laptop. In terms of number of visible and reachable pixels per degree of angle of vision.
While the iphone only provides you with 33% the resolution/experience in both browsing and video watching compared to a laptop. That is why most of the actual use of iphones and other similar sized smart phones are mostly for actually only doing phone calls and playing music and running random low definition apps (with few buttons and little screen size to actually use).
You may count screen size difference between 3.5″ and 4.8″ as “only” 1.3″ difference. Another way to compare screen sizes is the mathematical way, which is to say the truth that Archos 4.8″ screen is 2x the surface area of the iphone screen. Basically it is really a huge difference.
And I just don’t think it is right to say that 4.8″ screened devices don’t fit in most people’s pockets. Wallets and Passports are all larger than 4.8″ in diagonal and they are designed to be transported in pockets all over the world. Walking around with business card sized LCD screens is just not good enough in my opinion if you really care to take the Web and Video with you everywhere.
I am in a third world country when it comes to Internet connection speeds. Neither do any hotels in Las Vegas nor San Francisco provide any decent Internet upload speeds. Since I left the Press Room at the CES convention center on the 10th of January, I have barely been able to upload any of my 9mbit/s 1280×720 videos. Here are the places I tried:
– Imperial Palace Hotel Las Vegas : Internet sucks, it costs $10 per day, disconnects constantly, I couldn’t upload anything, Youtube would disconnect. The speed was actually 0 for most of the time. I had to call the ISP HKI Wireless and hold for 20 minutes to get one of their technical service representatives to remotely reboot the WiFi router so that the Internet would work at all. They did not provide a full refund for bad Internet service.
– Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas provides Ethernet connection but the upload speed is very bad, I was not able to upload any video successfully, it would always disconnect in the middle of file transfers (Youtube does not support resuming of uploads) and the upload speed was generally below 30kb/s. Connection cost $12.95 per night included in the “Resort fee”.
– Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas did not provide any decent upload speed either. I was not able to upload any video from that Hotel even though I stayed there 2 nights. All uploads got interrupted and were far too slow, upload speed less than 50kb/s over their Ethernet. Price $14.95 per night for the Internet though it’s included in their “Resort fee”.
– Treasure Island in Las Vegas did provide below 80kb/s upload speed, I managed to upload a couple of videos overnight. The Internet access is available using Ethernet and is included in their “resort fee” as well. Though it was much too slow for me to upload anything significant. I might have uploaded 1GB overnight from there.
– McCarran airport in Las Vegas provide decent 200kb/s upload connection, sponsored for free by Google. So I was able to upload 1.5GB to Youtube while waiting for my airplane to leave.
– San Francisco airport does not provide free Internet access so I did not try. One has to pay T-Mobile some unreasonable amount of money to connect.
– Marina Heritage Hotel in San Francisco has very crappy Internet access. Those are unencrypted WiFi hotspots provide by a company name HotWan. It sucks so bad, nothing was achieved and even checking Emails and browsing the Internet was unbearable.
– I tried about a dozen Netcafés in San Francisco, including Café Trieste on Market, Cyber Café on Geary Street, Quetzal Café on Polk Street, and half a dozen other places. Including the Fedex Kinkos on Van Nesse Avenue. None of them have any usable Internet upload speeds. They are all at less than 50kb/s and a couple might be around 80kb/s if I leech their whole connection (making things slow probably for everyone else in the net cafés), thus making it impossible for me to upload any of my videos without squatting one of these Internet Cafés for 15-20 hours. That’s not going to happen. ISP company named ZRnet provide WiFi at several of the places and hotels, their customer support line has no idea what bandwidth they provide and they disconnect users after 90minutes of use, making Youtube uploads impossible.
It would have been useful if there was some kind of user generated map of Speed Testing of all the download and upload speeds of all the hotels and netcafés. I wouldn’t mind paying $1-$3 per GB, as long as the speed is guaranteed 100mbit/s upload. I thought San Francisco was the Silicon Valley and that they would have decent Internet here. I get much faster private Internet over ADSL2+, Cable or Fiber in Copenhagen Denmark for $40-60 per month than US Hotels provide to all their guests combined.
So please check back within the next few days and I will hopefully have found some ways to upload my remaining 7.5GB of HD quality videos from CES 2010. At the least I will have them uploaded once I am back to real European 2mbit/s to 100mbit/s Upload speeds.
Most importantly, if you know where I might be able to find decent 10-100mbit/s upload speeds in San Francisco, please send me an email at charbax@charbax.com
I am not able to get enough bandwidth or any connection at all on the WiFi hotspots at the CES press events at the Venetian hotel (is CES not really interested in having bloggers blog about their tradeshow?), the Venetian press room has no working wifi and 6 ethernet cables to share among 2000 journalists. Also, the $10 daily WiFi access at my hotel room at Imperial Palace constantly drops off so I can for now not upload my first CES HD quality videos.
So for now I send you this blurry picture:
Today, I have seen some awesome looking ARM Powered laptops powered by Marvell and Qualcomm and the Lenovo one looks really great.
I will upload my videos daily as soon as I have access to the real Press Room at the convention center, perhaps starting tomorrow, where I am sure that they will provide hundreds of megabits per second upload speeds.
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And here is what you can find in all Radio Shack stores in the USA, the Archos 5 Internet Tablet (8GB) selling right there for a very affordable $249 price. If Archos markets this device the right way and provides a perfect Android firmware for it with full Google Marketplace integration, and soon announce 3G and 7″ versions and solutions for Camera and Compass, I think Archos has a huge opportunity right there to make a very big influence on the market.
You can follow my extensive HD quality video coverage from CES here on http://138.2.152.197 during the next few days.
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I will be in Las Vegas to film up to 50 HD quality videos from January 4th to 11th of the best ARM Powered® devices to be shown at the tradeshow. I will try to film behind-the-scenes Interviews with Engineers, Product Managers and other experts in the ARM Powered® Tablets, Mobile Phones and Laptops that are going to be shown at CES and launched hopefully soon thereafter at attractive prices.
The big question for me will be to notice the actual performance level reached by those latest ARM Cortex A8 or ARM Cortex A9 processors to be embedded in those devices. The certain crucial performance levels that we need to see working smoothly and fine are following:
– The web browser needs to browse on websites fast and with multiple amounts of opened tabs.
– The web browser needs to load advanced Javascripts and AJAX based websites just as fast as on an Intel-based Laptop.
– Flash 10.1 support needs to be just about as smooth and good on ARM Powered® devices as on Intel-based ones.
– I’d really like to see the first demos of fast and smooth Google Chromium OS demos running on ARM Powered® Laptops and Tablets. The full Google Chrome browser optimized to use hardware acceleration of the ARM Powered® Laptops and Tablets is crucial for the success of the platform. That is, it would be surely great to see Firefox and Opera browsers also working fast and smooth for all those advanced things.
– Some level of advanced 3D hardware acceleration for 3D game platforms such as the Unreal Engine, Quake3 demos, even N64 emulators demonstrated to work on all the latest ARM Cortex based technologies would be really great and would add a certain level of confidence in ARM Powered® devices from the bunch of 3D gamer geeks that do represent a large part of the blogosphere.
– In general, it would be extremely great to see working implementations of full hardware acceleration in Android and Chrome OS, as well as in Ubuntu 9.10 and any other Linux ARM based OS that can really be used well to optimize the use of hardware acceleration.
Then in terms of business models, ARM Powered® devices should have more opportunity to be sold to consumers at attractive prices. Subsidizing the devices with telecom contracts running up to more than $2000 over the 2-years is one way to do it. What I would really like to see are official announcements that the ARM Powered® Laptops and Tablets are not only very powerful in terms of Javascripts/Flash/3D performance, but also that they can be sold significantly cheaper to the end consumer than devices based on Intel.
The $200 ARM Powered® Laptop and the promise of $100 ones for consumers to buy totally unlocked and without contracts, that is where the biggest opportunity lies with ARM Powered® devices in my opinion. By bring the PC/Laptop industry to a lower cost level, could also mean that 1 Billion or more people around the world will be able to afford to have full access to the web. And if all those devices can add the Pixel Qi low power sunlight readable screen and even function in Tablet mode, run 20-40 hours on a low cost and light battery, then all the greatest. It would be really nice to see actual product announcements at CES in just a few days.
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OLPC designer Yves Behar is showing the XO-3 design over at http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/22/tablet-computer-negroponte-technology-cio-network-olpc.html
Imagine an ARM Powered Tablet computer with the 10.1″ Pixel Qi screen, where the screen uses plastics instead of glass to be very resistive. Imagine low enough battery usage in transflective mode to power the device for 40 hours even though the less than 1cm in thickness of the Tablet does not allow for much space for the batteries. Imagine a fully optimized use of the Pixel Qi screens reflective abilities where the screen only needs to refresh at the speed of 1hz when in e-reader mode when nothing moves on the screen, with the processor and motherboard also completely shut off and standby to save power when they are not required. But where screen refresh rate and the processor and motherboard can instantly be turned on as soon as they are needed again.
Imagine wireless data technologies based on White Spaces, for free unlimited wireless broadband on the 700mhz spectrum, WiFi Mesh networking and maybe even low power Bluetooth built-in.
Imagine a touch screen technology which would allow for very responsive touchscreen interfaces to accommodate reading, web browsing, typing and playing of games. Yet where the touch screen functions on a plastic screen that is scratch resistant.
All that for $75 and to be released within two years. Those are the latest plans from the OLPC organization, the same people that invented the Netbook industry as I wrote in http://www.olpcnews.com/commentary/impact/olpc_netbook_impact_on_laptop.html
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http://www.cherrypal.com/products.php just did a big splash on the blogosphere (engadget, gizmodo etc) about them launching the Menq EasyPC E790 rebranded Cherrypal Africa to the US market for just $99. I filmed this model made by Menq here last month: http://138.2.152.197/2009/11/12/80-android-laptop-menq-easypc-e790/
I would be really proud and happy if distributors and brands such as Cherrypal are approaching the manufacturers of the best products that I film, this would really be a nice success criteria for my video-blogging work. It is my goal to highlight interesting new products when I find them at consumer electronics trade shows and when I get review samples and to try and get those videos to do the rounds of the big blogs when the content of my videos are original and interesting enough.
It is really great to see the Menq EasyPC E790 for sale in the US market branded Cherrypal Africa so soon after my video. If this helps speeding up the availability of an Android firmware onto the laptop, then that would be even better!
Funny as well, at the same time, Cherrypal is launching the Optima OP5-W rebranded Cherrypal Bing for just $389 as well which I filmed a couple of weeks ago as well at http://techvideoblog.com/reviews/optima-op5-w-350-121-laptop-for-ubuntu-or-windows-xp/ ! This seems to me that it is likely that Cherrypal is a fan of my video productions. Leading them to take concrete actions in contacting the manufacturers of the products that I highlight and negociate immediate orders of large quantities of those products.
I look forward to my videos influencing more distributors in the coming weeks. Look forward to my extensive video coverage of all the best ARM powered devices from January 7th to 10th at the CES Consumer Electronics Show!
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Several blogs have been reporting my speculation on Nexus One pricing as a rumor. Which is okay, but I am only freely thinking what to expect Google will do about the pricing. What I think Google should do. I don’t have secret infos from Google insiders, at least not yet. Although I am sure Google insiders are monitoring what the blogosphere is talking about so if they see a lot of people getting excited about disruptive pricing and VOIP features, then it could well encourage them to actually really make the big announcements and make it happen at the launch.
My speculation is based on following:
1. Manufacture and Bill of Material of a 3.7″ AMOLED touch screen smartphone has been calculated by isupply and others to cost below $150 all inclusive when mass manufactured. Although an AMOLED WVGA screen is probably a bit more expensive than a 3.5″ 480×320 LCD screen. Manufacturers and resellers make very high profit margins when they sell unlocked smartphones at $400-500, and I think, those prices are only a deterrent to unlocked phones and to push consumers into signing $2500 2-year contracts for getting those phones.
2. My speculation is that when Google will be selling its own phone (even manufactured by HTC or other Smartphone manufacturers in Asia), my speculation is that Google does not need to profit on the hardware, but plans to profit over time on mobile ads and services.
3. Google does not own spectrum, yet my basic suggestion is that Google may be able to approach telecom carriers internationally and offer to buy Petabytes of bandwidth on 3G networks, at a given rate per GB, and my speculation is that 3G bandwidth data should definitely cost less than $10 or 5€ per GB. If Google is able to purchase 1 Petabyte of 3G data from a telecom carrier for $10 per GB, guaranteed best effort bandwidth not throttled for VOIP, then what would stop Google from offering 100MB free bandwidth per month to users of unlocked Android phones, to use for basically as much VOIP over 3G using Google Voice, Gmail, basic Gmaps and basic Web browsing as most users would need. Thus get an unlocked Android phone with a Google SIM card and get unlimited free VOIP and 100mb/month data for free on ad-supported Google services or purchase more data for a certain price for example $10 per GB to use whenever you want, not needed to be renewed each month. I am probably far over-estimating the cost of 3G data bandwidth, the price per GB is probably below 1€ per GB, unless telecom carriers just refuse the deal and that they wouldn’t accept to sell any 3G cellular bandwidth to Google.
I have been campaigning for free VOIP on WiFi and 3G for years, since I have been very active fanboy of all Archos Internet Tablets since the Archos PMA400 released in 2004 on my other site http://archosfans.com, where my hope has always been to some day have better telecom system that doesn’t try to sell you a $2500 2-year contract with a $150 smartphone. But instead move towards improving the smart device, implement better optimized software through Linux (Android enables that for the first time), larger higher resolution screens (4.8″ 800×480 like Archos 5 Internet Tablet is my favorite size and resolution), and also some day, make it possible for people to just buy the bandwidth that they need and not charge unreasonable prices anymore for voice and sms services.
Here are some of the sites that have been posting my speculation over the past couple of days:
http://www.product-reviews.net/2009/12/15/google-nexus-one-pricing-details/
http://androidandme.com/2009/12/news/android-rumor-report-nexus-one-to-cost-199/
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/?p=1517
http://www.i4u.com/article29235.html
http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2009/12/google_nexus_one_to_cost_199.html
http://www.geardiary.com/2009/12/16/nexus-one-google-phone-pricing-rumors-round-up/
http://www.mobilemag.com/2009/12/15/google-to-sell-nexus-one-unlocked-for-199/
http://pixelatedgeek.com/2009/12/more-google-phone-rumors-grain-of-salt/
http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/aexhb/google_phone_199_without_contract99_for_google/ (1088+ comments!)
http://www.hackchasers.com/news/nexus-one-le-5-janvier-2010-date-de-lancement/
http://richard.gluga.com/2009/12/googles-nexus-one-with-free-data.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/14/AR2009121403454.html
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EDIT: Google has not confirmed any pricing for the Google Phone Nexus One. You can read my latest post backing up my speculations on what I expect Google will price it, what I think Google should price it: http://138.2.152.197/2009/12/16/the-blogosphere-reports-my-nexus-one-pricing-speculation-as-fact/
As I have been posting in comments on mediamemo.allthingsd.com, gizmodo.com and androidguys.com, I enjoy speculating about features and prices of phones and business models. So let me post here the prices that I expect this first Google Phone to be sold at and some of what I expect of its hardware specifications:
– $200 sold through all retailers, Best Buy, Amazon, Wal Mart and any others. Unlocked, for use on any network, but I think it may come with a so-called Google SIM card (read further below)
– Google may provide a subsidy up to $100 for long-time and very active Google users. So if you buy it online using your Google Account, they may provide you with an instant rebate. If you buy it for $200 in retail stores, Google can still provide you the online $100 rebate to use on the Google Android Marketplace, on Google Checkout stores or even on extra data for your Google SIM card (read futher below).
– My speculation is that Google may provide up to 100mb of free data usage per month to all Android users with a Google SIM card (read futher below). The 100mb per month would be enough for as much Google Voice, Gmail, Gtalk, and basic web browsing that most people need (disabling bandwidth intensive things such as images can easily be setup). No contracts needed for those 100mb per month, but those may only work for use on Google services, for low bandwidth Android apps or for basic web browsing. In any ways, there would be a bandwidth usage counter clearly displayed at the top of the Android user interface next to the battery meter. The free 100mb per month may be throttled and may sometimes be limited to GPRS type of speeds.
– Extra bandwidth could be purchased in one click, such as I expect 1GB for $10 or 5€ is possible. That extra GB of bandwidth would be usable at any point in time and not need to be renewed every month.
– A monthly $30 or 20€ bandwidth package would provide up to 5GB in the USA or 10GB in Europe per month of unrestricted and full speed 3G bandwidth usage.
– Thus the overall Bill Of Material and Manufacturing costs for a Google Nexus One is probably below $150, so Google can very likely sell it below $200 with 8GB built-in storage and with MicroSD for storage expansion. Google doesn’t look for making profits on hardware, they will make their profits on ads over the several months or several years that the hardware is being used.
The Google SIM card speculation:
– All those bandwidth speculations would work using the Google SIM card on any unlocked Android phone. Though since the Nexus One would be unlocked, any other SIM card could be used as well. And thus, competitors or telecom carriers themselves can provide SIM cards with pre-paid, with or without subscriptions for other packages of data usage. I think Google would allow Microsoft and others to take part in financing those free 100mb per month so users would be able to use competing online services and VOIP providers for free as well.
The calculation and speculation for a worldwide Google SIM card bandwidth service should thus be based on trying to not only guess if carriers will allow Google to turn them into dumb pipes of bandwidth, on the other hand, we should try to guess what price Google may pay to buy 3G data bandwidth in bulk from the carriers and thus at what price Google may sell it back to Android users without the need of monthly data subscriptions. My guess is that $10 per GB in the USA and 5€ per GB in Europe should be more than enough payment for the 3G data bandwidth. And that most likely Google should be able to purchase that for much lower prices if Google negociates deals for several Petabytes of 3G data bandwidth with the carriers. Thus giving away 100MB of bandwidth per unlocked Android user per month, would most likely cost a lot less than $1 per month to Google, thus that would be something Google should be able to give to unlocked Android users for free. But even if carriers would charge Google as much as $10 per GB for 3G data bandwidth, I believe that my speculation on the Google SIM card could still make a lot of sense.
Because Google would negociate for 3G data bandwidth with all carriers in every country. I believe that it should be possible for users to seamlessly and freely roam for data usage in other countries. That is, as long as they do use a Google SIM card for unlocked Android phones.
Source for picture: http://www.engadget.com/
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This may be a picture of the Google Phone:
From rumors on Techcrunch, this may be a pre-paid only $100 device, for WiFi and pre-paid 3G Voice over IP usage such as on Google Voice. Exactly the revolutionary business model that I have been talking about for a while. My guess on the Google Phone price, or what I think it should cost is following:
$100 for the 3.7″ high density WVGA Google Phone Nexus One
$150 for the 4.8″ medium density Google Tablet Nexus XL
All should come based on ARM Cortex A8 processors, probably OLED capacitative on Nexus One and LCD resistive on the Nexus XL. My suggestion is basically that the Nexus XL may be similar to my favorite consumer electronics device the Archos 5 Internet Tablet which I talk about in countless videos: http://138.2.152.197/?s=archos and on my other site: http://archosfans.com
The most important factor here would be if the rumors are true and if my guessing is right, that the Google Phone and Tablet will be the first pre-paid Android phone and tablet. Affordable, my guessing also may even make it so that Google may not only sell it through all retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, Wal Mart, Media Markt, Aldi and such, but that one may even be able to buy it on google’s own website and based on how active one has been on Google over the past few years, Google may even subsidize the purchase price of the phone or tablet. That is, cause Google can know it will more likely make more money on mobile ads from users who use Google services a lot. This way, look forward to Google Phone at $50, Google Tablet for $100 and even the Google Laptop/Tablet/E-reader at $150.
Some times, I think that it does take a big giant technology company like Google to really invest not only in the platform, not only in software, but also dedicate teams of hardware engineers into actually releasing own branded hardware on the market and push the boundaries in terms of business models to apply to the distribution of such technology. To push things forward faster, Google needs to make hardware.
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Chrome OS Laptops will cost 50 dollars and run 20 hours on a battery, and come with free unlimited 3G internet data connectivity.
Chrome OS is not going to be companion to Windows/Mac, Chrome OS is destroying Microsoft/Apple and even Intel.
You will be able to run powerful and free image and video editing software using Native code and hardware accelerations functions of Chrome OS and HTML5.
Chrome OS works offline just as well as any other laptop. Want to write emails while offline and auto-send them when you find a web connection? That is possible. Want to write documents offline and sync them when you find a WiFi? That is possible. Want to watch video while offline? Just connect USB storage and that is possible. I am sure Chrome OS laptops will even come with extra storage and hard drive compartments built-in if you really want to carry a lot of stored data to do a lot of things offline. Otherwise, by that time, there will be Google Drive to store a TB of your personal files for less than 50 dollars per year, thus only slightly more expensive than buying a TB hard drive. And if you will want to store divx or mp3 files on your Google Drive that other users have stored on Google Drive already, you won’t have to actually upload it, a quick scan and a copy is on your Google Drive and storage costs will be shared by all the users who will have access to a copy of the file.
Chrome OS works on touch screens, uses whatever hardware you want. Most importantly, with a 50 dollar ARM laptop the experience will be just as good as on a 400 dollar Intel laptop.
1. They are much cheaper. Cheapest unlocked 3G-enabled ARM based laptops will be sold at $100 without any carrier contracts needed.
2. ARM Laptops have no screen size limits. Get a 15″ ARM powered laptop for $200 soon.
3. ARM Laptops run 15-20 hours on a small 3-cell battery at the minimum.
4. ARM Laptops are lighter, they don’t get hot like Intel based laptops.
5. Chrome OS (= Android 2.0) runs on ARM Laptops better than on Intel.
6. ARM Laptops can come with 500GB hard drives for just a $80 extra fee to pay for the hard drive. They can even all come with an empty 2.5″ sata hard drive slot to add any hard drive available on the market to add storage to it.
7. ARM Laptops have instant on ability, applications run faster and all load instantly.
8. Full HTML5 enabled browser runs on ARM Laptops with an unlimited amount of tabs with as little as only 256mb RAM required thus lowering the price.
