Canadian consumers on hold for search-engine giant’s first venture into hardware
Gillian Shaw
Sun
The highly anticipated Nexus One, which marks the first time Google has designed and sold its own consumer hardware device, could provide the search-engine titan with a viable challenge to Apple’s iPhone and Research in Motion’s BlackBerry. Photograph by: Reuters, Vancouver Sun
The new tech decade got off to a strong start Tuesday as Google took the wraps off its new phone, the Nexus One, and announced its Web store will sell phones that aren’t locked into specific carriers.
But Canadian consumers are still on hold for the new phone, with no promises of when it will be sold here.
Google’s announcement comes on the eve of the Consumer Electronics Show — the annual Las Vegas event showcasing the latest consumer tech trends and gadgets — which officially opens to a keynote address from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on Wednesday evening.
Google’s Nexus One will be available on the T-Mobile network in the United States, or unlocked, and Google plans to make it available for Verizon in the U.S. and Vodafone in Europe in the first quarter of 2010.
Google Canada representative Tamara Micner said no specific timing has been set for the release of the phone for Canadian consumers, but she added, “we’re hoping for soon.”
“Right now it’s available in the U.S., U.K., Singapore and Hong Kong,” she wrote in an e-mail.
The Android phone was made by HTC, which has produced other phones running on the Android operating system but this marks the first Google branded phone.
A slim 11.5 centimetre thick with a 9.3 cm touchscreen and a one GHz processor, the new phone also has a five-megapixel camera with a LED flash and video. It runs on the latest Android 2.1 software.
It has up to 10 hours of talk time on 2G or seven hours on 3G on a fully charged battery and up to five hours of Internet use on a 3G network or 6.5 hours on a Wi-Fi network.
Another major announcement, Apple’s long-rumoured tablet computer is expected in late January but other tablet computers could have their first introduction at the CES, including the also widely rumoured Courier tablet from Microsoft.
E-readers, which are expected to face tough competition from the new Apple entry, are also high on the agenda at the CES. Among them is the Skiff Reader, the product of a start-up company backed by Hearst, and optimized for newspapers and magazines.
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