droidStory

The long wait for the new Android phones coming to Verizon is excruciating. Both Google’s Nexus One and the new HTC Incredible were expected to be here by now, with the last rumored release date being sometime during the International CTIA Wireless Expo in Las Vegas in March. Well, March has come and gone and Spring is here – where are the N1 and the Incredible?

The rumor mill keeps spinning and the HTC Incredible is showing up in different places at Verizon, implying that a release should be imminent, but WHEN?!

HTC Incredible Shows Up in Verizon Warehouse

HTC Incredible Shows Up in CelleBrite Application

VZW Offers Teaser on Twitter

Verizon officially launched Skype for most of their Smartphones today, including all of their current Android handsets – the Motorola Droid, HTC Eris and Motorola Devour.

This is a very important move for Big Red, basically acknowledging that the future of mobile networks is in providing high-speed IP connectivity for all network applications, even the ones that compete with the providers traditional voice business.  Verizon is finally getting with the times by abandoning some of their past customer unfriendly business practices.  Blackberry users may still remember when their GPS capable phones had their hardware disabled by Verizon, rendering Google Maps useless, unless you paid an extra $12/month for VZ-Navigator. Of course there were also all the other bogus surcharges for tethering and BES Enterprise use.

The arrival of the Droid and now Skype seem to usher in a new era for Verizon. Let’s hope the bureaucrats at the company are not trying to turn back the clock for the sake of the bottom line.

UPDATE: Skype doesn’t work on Wi-Fi! Come again!?
Not sure if this is Verizon meddling with phone/application functionality again, but why?

The numbers are in. Analytics firm Flurry is comparing sales figures for the most popular smartphones in the first 74 days on the market. Flurry estimates sales based on downloaded applications featuring its embedded analytics technology.

According to the report, Google sold only about 135,000 Nexus One phones in the first 74 days, compared to roughly 1.05 million Motorola Droid’s sold during the same time frame. For comparison, Apple sold about 1 million units of  the original iPhone.

Overall the results are an impressive statement for Android and resonate with the recent ComScore report showing Android’s market share growing to 7.1% in the US.

So why is the Nexus One struggling?

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You can now get a Nexus One from the Google phone store that is compatible with AT&T’s 3G frequency bands.

To clarify: Even though T-Mobile and AT&T are both using the GSM standard for their mobile networks the radio frequencies for their 3G data networks are different.  For the consumer, that means you’ll need to buy a carrier specific phone in order to get 3G access .

A Verizon CDMA version should become available within days. I think this is the first time that the same phone (name, packaging) will be available on three different every major US mobile network. This should make things really interesting on eBay as people buying used Nexus One’s will have to make extra certain they are getting the one that works with their chosen mobile provider.

Update: Sprint just announced that they will also be getting the Nexus One.

A number of Android developers have complaint about the ‘flaky’ multi-touch behavior of the Nexus One touch screen, which differs from the touch screen calibration issues reported on the Google support forums.

I didn’t notice either problem, so far. Even the new pinch-to-zoom feature works flawlessly on my N1.  Then earlier this week the following video surfaced that  shows how to reproduce the problem with an app called Multitouch Visible Test, created by Robert Green of Battery Powered Games.

I downloaded the app from the Android market, and sure enough I was able to reproduce what is shown in the video. It seems that the Nexus One touch screen gets confused when your fingers get too close together on an axis using multi-touch. That’s not something you’d notice when zooming in and out on maps or pictures, but with games this could be an issue.

Is this a hardware or software bug? As it turns out, it’s neither – it’s a limitation of the touch screen hardware used in the Nexus One. The same problem was already reported with the “original” Google phone the G1. The touch screen used in both phones only supports two-finger touch gestures (e.g. pinch, pivot, rotate), so it’s really a side effect of dual-touch vs. multi-touch.

There may be a way to overcome this hardware limitation with an improved software algorithm that better tracks all touch movement, but for now this is a non-issue for my everyday use of the N1.

And all you Droid owners, it’s your time to brag – as this is not a problem on the Motorola Droid.

Google is acknowledging the importance of its Android-App-Eco-System by awarding free phones to selected app developers.

“Due to your contribution to the success of Android Market, we would like to present you with a brand new Android device as part of our developer device seeding program. You are receiving this message because you’re one of the top developers in Android Market with one or more of your applications having a 3.5 star or higher rating and more than 5,000 unique downloads.”

For the US market Google will randomly award either a Droid or Nexus One, while in Europe and other GSM only markets developers will receive a Nexus One.

Why is Google doing this? As it turns out many app developers still don’t have access to the latest devices running Android 2.x and it’s in Google’s best interest to have a flourishing app market with as many applications that take advantage of the latest features that Android 2.x has to offer.