“If you want it subsidized, you’ll have to sign up for a 2 year mandatory contract and pay $180 for the phone,” Chen reports.
“There’s only one rate plan: $39.99 Even More + Text + Web for $79.99 total,” Chen reports. “If you cancel your plan before 120 days, you have to pay the subsidy difference between what you paid and the unsubsidized price, so $350 in this case. Or you can return the phone to Google.”
Chen reports, “One weirdness in the Terms of Sale that we quickly glanced through was that Google made sure you acknowledged that the manufacturer is HTC, and not Google.”
More info in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Edward W.” for the heads up.]
“Google made sure you acknowledged that the manufacturer is HTC, and not Google”
Be interesting if Apple made sure you acknowledged that the manufacturer were … Fox? … instead of Apple.
I never thought of you as dumb…. now I do.
Be interesting if Apple made sure you acknowledged that the manufacturer were …
Sure it would, especially since Apple products are designed by Apple and not the one’s manufacturing it.
Google, OTOH want its customers to know they had nothing to do with the physical design of Nexus One, in case any issues with something other than the OS, would be addressed by HTC.
Reminds me of the finger-pointing debacle between computer manufacturers and Microsoft.
Google, OTOH want its customers to know they had nothing to do with the physical design of Nexus One, so that any issues with something other than the OS, would be addressed by HTC.
oops
Everyone wants Google to be the savior – and it’s turning out to be Google in a ‘savior’ Halloween costume – not the real thing. It’s very simple – if you have or can get an iphone – you’re done, if not – get an Android. I havent checked the latest offerings but I figure RIM is still for ‘all business’ people, while Android is more ‘consumer ready’, and iphone is consumer ready AND starting to take a business lead.
@G4Dualie
Yet another reason why Google Android will fail.
Customers won’t know and don’t care about Google’s structure or business. All they want is assurance that it’ll work.
If Google redirects all enquiries of HardWare to HTC, this would further confuse customers and hence they’ll fall back to the iPhone. Customers only know if theres a problem, not about if the problem is Hardware or Software.
What a stupid approach, again this goes to show that Google are for geeks and programmers and not for serious business or normal users.
I’ll be curious to see what percentage of these devices are purchased unlocked. The one size fits all subsidized plan is really quite restrictive IMO; it certainly wouldn’t meet my needs.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple’s 8GB iPhone 3GS came out the same day @ $99.
http://www.macrumors.com/2009/12/30/reports-of-possible-upcoming-8-gb-iphone-3gs-revived/
Hmmm… $80 more than an iPhone.
Well, I wish ’em luck with it.
“Google, OTOH want its customers to know they had nothing to do with the physical design of Nexus One, so that any issues with something other than the OS, would be addressed by HTC.”
Well, almost. They want to make sure the customer understands that Google has nothing to do with any warranties, stated or implied. As software itself has no warranty, the physical device is the only thing that warranties apply to, and HTC needs to provide that service, not Google. You might not even be able to facilitate warranty service through Google. Similar to Google acting like Amazon for this.
iphone is only 100 bucks. they will flop with this.. and i’m on tmobile until next summer (contract BS)
You can only buy five per account? Deal breaker for me – I only purchase my disposable goods by the dozen.
“Google will sell [their rebadged HTC device called “Nexus One”
Remember when Michael Arrington creamed himself over the “super-high confidence information” regarding Google Phone?
“There won’t be any negotiation or compromise over the phone’s design of features – Google is dictating every last piece of it. No splintering of the Android OS that makes some applications unusable. Like the iPhone for Apple, this phone will be Google’s pure vision of what a phone should be. — Michael Arrington November 17, 2009
Yeah right, Michael. A rebadged HTC phone? Is this what your super-high confidence sources had in mind?
And what about all that talk about splintering? In January Nexus One will be released with Android 2.1, whereas the soon-to-be-released Sony-Erricson phone coming in latter part of 2010 will still have Android v.1.6 installed.
Google couldn’t have messed this platform up any worse than Microsoft did with WinMo.
…”I’ll be curious to see what percentage of these devices are purchased unlocked.”
In the US, not very many. The problem is, it is very difficult to get a cheaper monthly plan without the subsidy component. If you want an all-you-can-eat data plan with some cheap voice-and-text component, you’ll end up paying around $70, even if you don’t sign the two-year contract. Since that is the lowest-costing iPhone plan (and that plan contains a massive $450 subsidy), it is foolish to pay subsidy without getting a free (or cheap) phone in exchange.
Only those people who use data sparingly could possibly save some money by buying an unlocked, unsusbidised device. Paying a cheap voice-only plan and then paying for used data only, they could presumably bring the monthly bill under $60 or so. That way, it would take a bit under two years to come out ahead on an unsubsidised phone, vs. signing a two-year voice-and-data contract at $80 per month.
Unlocked phones are a bad bargain in the US, since you can’t get a plan that does NOT contain the subsidy.
The odds of there being an AT&T;version are very high, the changes are trivial. More on it at:
Nexus One Forum