The recent Mobile World Congress left a sense that something's amiss in the Google phone world. It's been five months since T-Mobile unveiled the G1 to rave reviews. Nothing came at January's Consumer Electronics Show, and now little at the world's biggest gathering of wireless companies.
Only one new handset running Google's Android software was unveiled to compete with the original G1. The maker of that phone, HTC, is producing a new all-touchscreen model, the Magic, for U.K. operator Vodafone.
Another Google-phone design from Chinese maker Huawei was on display, sort of, reports Gary Krakow at TheStreet.com:
Yes, there was an Android phone on display, but just like Garmin's nuvifone at last year's show, this new design was also under glass. Actually, to be technically correct, it was behind glass. Thick glass. And it was placed all the way toward the back of the display case. Just a little black slab sitting there motionless. As you might imagine, nothing was turned on or working.
At FierceWireless, Gary Krakow sounds willing to cut the Android camp some slack:
Maybe it was all too much hype. Maybe the handset makers are still working out the details with their carrier partners and will wait until just before the commercial launch to announce. Still, it seemed like quite the letdown.
It's hard to quantify what's missing when nothing was officially scheduled. But in the case of Google's camp, nothing definitely became news.
Reader Comments Read all comments (1)
raulito of IA 10:49PM October 20, 2009