5 ms·

Google Nexus One docs get leaked: $530 unsubsidized, $180 with plan

29 points by transburgh 17y ago

ugh 17y ago
Short: Just another phone.
- pmcginn 17y ago
  Yeah, if these docs are true, I'm sticking with Verizon and my BlackBerry; not that I have any special love for either one of them. $80/mo? That's what I pay Verizon. $180 for a subsidized, non-Apple smartphone? Keep your ten percent. There goes my post-christmas geek present to myself. Without the massive cost savings that had been rumored, I have zero incentive to pay out of my Verizon contract.
  - pyre 17y ago
    > $180 for a subsidized, non-Apple smartphone? If the 'non-Apple' part is an issue then why aren't you buying an iPhone?
cwan 17y ago
Not in the US so I don't really know how the plans are like but this seems expensive: "- If you want it subsidized, you’ll have to sign up for a 2 year mandatory contract - There’s only one rate plan: $39.99 Even More + Text + Web for $79.99 total". It would seem that if you want the phone that badly it would be cheaper just to cough up the $530. Incidentally, given that we sort of know what the pricing is (I suppose they could be aggressive about dropping the price later), what's the strategy here for Google? Just worried about cannibalizing sales of other firms that use Android? Why even bother putting out their own phone or being so involved with Motorola in the development of the iDroid?
- Andys 17y ago
  Exactly what I did to get my G1 here in Australia. Bought it outright for around $600 and then went on a $5/month plan with calls and data that are cheap enough ($15/GB). As far as I can see, buying outright always works out cheaper than a hefty plan with all the trimmings included
- buster 17y ago
  That's around the same price you pay for phone + unlimited dataplan in germany (atleast for iphone and G1).
zenlinux 17y ago
Drat. If the earlier rumors I had heard were true (unlocked phone for $199), I was thinking they were committing to a smart strategy to decimate Nokia and their N900 phone. Guess that's not the case.
- houseabsolute 17y ago
  It would be nice if you spent some time explaining why you believe selling at $199 would be "smart". Google already gives too many things away for free. Selling a phone that might be able to compete with the iPhone at $199 almost certainly means selling at a loss. To what end? I can't imagine that search queries can make up for the remaining $100 or $200 that it costs to manufacture the phone. Unless you believe "decimating Nokia" is an end itself, I'm curious why you think it would be a smart move.
  - zenlinux 17y ago
    Google has a lot more at stake than just profits from this particular phone. They are interested in establishing the Android platform as a major player on smart phone devices, and are coming into the game with a pretty weak position given Apple's current dominance. To be able to make headway into the market they need every advantage they can get, and neutralizing Nokia's N900 offering would help prevent another player from complicating the market for them. Not to mention at that price they'd be dealing Apple a major blow. I figure they have the cash, why not use it for something like this. I admit this is all idle speculation on my part, and that Google may or may not have a lot at stake in the success of Andriod.
  - pmcginn 17y ago
    The $199 was never the attraction for me, and seemed unlikely. $300? Ehh... Maybe. I always figured it'd land in the $500 range, and this isn't too far off. The real carrot for me was the idea of a prepaid $29/mo data only plan, which I actually thought was believable. T-Mobile already offers pretty much the exact same plan ($1/day) for prepaid Sidekick users (voice is 0.15/min.) I barely use voice (~100 minutes/mo), and if I could drop my unlimited text/internet/450 voice plan for something that was only $29, I could definitely learn to live with the quirks of VOIP on a mobile handset and the loss of MMS. Honestly, even if you threw me in a contract to get the phone at $199, as long as data was that cheap I'd gladly sign up for two years the same minute I was sending Verizon their $350 good-bye letter. I don't use my phone as a phone and am sick of having to pay so much for minutes I just don't use. The cost of my voice plan before data and text is around $40/mo, which works out to me paying .40/minute for what I use. Even if I used real voice instead of Google Voice I'd be saving money.
grandalf 17y ago
I was excited about the rumored $99 pricing. This is a huge disappointment.
- timdorr 17y ago
  You were disappointed by a lie?
  - grandalf 17y ago
    All of the other rumors about google products/services have turned out to be true, so I felt a bit more inclined to believe this one than I typically would. Also, I would really respect Google for using some of its billions of dollars to subsidize the phone to the $99 price point and take tons of market share (thus creating a huge incentive for app developers). Sadly Google seems content to release just another phone.
    - plinkplonk 17y ago
      "using some of its billions of dollars to subsidize the phone to the $99 price point" easy to suggest when it is not your billions of dollars being thrown away ;-) "This device, sold at or near cost, " (as jsz0 suggests) is a more reasonable strategy, since (a) Google's main revenue streams are not affected (probably enhanced) and (b) Apple and Nokia can't compete without reducing their profit. That said, I think Google is a sufficiently big company now to have mediocre middle managers who'd scuttle such "radical" ideas.
      - grandalf 17y ago
        True, those are accurate points. I was just hoping for a really bold move. This does not seem to be all that bold (unless the $199 pricing is for people w/o "old" google accounts which might still leave room for the rumor to be true).
  - randallsquared 17y ago
    Disappointed by it being a lie. This is why rumors can be a bad thing for upcoming products: overhyping leads to disappointment with what otherwise might have seemed a solid offering.
swolchok 17y ago
Why are phones so bloody expensive? The iPod Touch can be had for $200ish, so why does adding the "phone part" double the cost? (full disclosure: I'm on the iPod Touch curmudgeon phone plan -- I pay Skype $3/mo for outgoing calls and insist that incoming callers leave voicemail, which is emailed to me through Google Voice.)
- mattmaroon 17y ago
  Well there's the phone part. The GPS. The camera. It costs $99 subsidized, and if I'm not mistaken you can get out of a contract for $200, so that's $300 right?
- rdouble 17y ago
  http://www.isuppli.com/News/Pages/iPhone-3G-S-Carries-178-96-BOM-and-Manufacturing-Cost-iSuppli-Teardown-Reveals.aspx http://www.isuppli.com/News/Pages/iPhone-3G-S-Carries-178-96...
  - g_lined 17y ago
    There are enough questions about where their numbers come from that it would be advised to think before using them as any more than a guide to some costs involved. http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/04/13/isuppli-shuffle http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/04/13/isuppli-shuffle http://daringfireball.net/2007/07/isuppli http://daringfireball.net/2007/07/isuppli
- timdorr 17y ago
  It's not the "phone part", it's the size. They're packing a phone, various hardware components, a CPU, storage, a bright screen, and a battery to power the whole thing into a tiny package. I'm surprised it's only $529 unsubsidized.
- nostrademons 17y ago
  My phone's got more processing power and more memory than the laptop I bought 5 years ago. It also has a GPS, camera, accelerometer, voice recognition, and cellular connection. And it fits in my pocket. The laptop cost $1600 when I bought it. Why are we complaining about a $500ish phone?
ars 17y ago
Looks like kw_ has to pay up on his bet with michaelkeenan http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=997078 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=997078
- jrockway 17y ago
  Before anyone makes any donations, someone should probably wait for this information to be confirmed by Google or T-Mobile. You know, the people actually selling the product, not some random blog...
jsz0 17y ago
Google is missing an opportunity here. This device, sold at or near cost, could have been an iPod Touch competitor. That would have been a huge boost to the Android Market. It seems the iPod Touch is outselling the iPhone these days by a pretty good clip -- at least according to holiday App Store downloads: http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/12/28/flurry-app-store-sees-record-breaking-christmas-50-growth-from-november-to-december/ http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/12/28/flurry-app-store-sees...
- jrockway 17y ago
  The Android iPod Touch equivalent is the Archos 5 Internet Tablet. It is much better than the iPod in nearly every way, unless you absolutely must have App Store apps. (It plays 720p MKVs, for example. This is good if you obtain your video files not-from-iTunes.) Archos released it way before the software was ready, but with the latest firmware updates, it's excellent.
- iigs 17y ago
  Google undercutting their hardware partners would be suicide for future phone wins. Moreover, since Google doesn't do their own hardware, this would surely be the last time HTC partnered with them and they'd be up a creek for future hardware designs. Google only cares about things with a data connection, and I firmly believe that WiFi only devices are a small enough market that they're just a distraction for the big names right now -- except Apple, since the iPod touch kind of bridged an established product with the at-the-time new phone platform.
ars 17y ago
If I buy the unlocked phone can I use it with AT&t (or any other GSM carrier)?
- freetard 17y ago
  Yes you can.
- bretpiatt 17y ago
  It looks like though if you want to use it on AT&T you'll be on EDGE until it is jailbroken. It has the proper frequency 3G chip in it but in the early testing it only connects to the 2.5G EDGE network so something with the AT&T 3G is disabled on it. I'll be swapping from my BlackBerry Bold as soon as this gets fixed. Maybe I'm crazy for not wanting an iPhone since I'm already on AT&T and want to stay with them as a carrier but this looks like the first device I'm willing to switch to instead of a BlackBerry after making the swap a few years back from an Nokia N61.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
- nicpottier 17y ago
  Will it work for voice? Definitely. Will it work for data, kinda. The nexus is on the 3G band that T-Mo uses (as does most of the rest of the world I believe) but not the one AT&T uses, so you'll be stuck on Edge (which sucks) if you want to use it on AT&T. PS. This isn't a software issue as the commenter above says, well it is, but it isn't software anybody is going to be changing anytime soon. (radio firmware)
dannyr 17y ago
I'm going to hold off making judgement until Google's announcement on January 5. I think they have something up in their sleeves. My guess is its mostly software-related though - new Android features or cloud/mobile services.
- jrockway 17y ago
  What cloud features does Google not provide? Add a contact in Google Voice, watch it show up on your phone. Change the color of a calendar on Google Calendar, watch the color change on the calendar widget. Etc., etc.
  - dannyr 17y ago
    Full backup of your data and files (e.g. photos, music, videos). Easy access to your Google Docs. I believe there are apps on the market that does this but Google might integrate in the core of Android. Native Google Task App.
derwiki 17y ago
This is all wishful thinking.. but if anyone at Google is listening, how about discounts for us G1 users? We knew the G1 wasn't as good as an iPhone, but we bought it anyway, because we wanted to do our part in helping the Android OS succeed. Now it's one year later, Droids have come out, and I still get a "kill task" dialog every time I start a browser on the G1 (because it's slow).
awa 17y ago
Sigh.. I was all excited about it and was thinking of dumping my iPhone, since it seemed I would atleast save some money in the long run. Unfortunately, it would cost me the same and T-mobile service isn't much better than AT&T (imho) The only interesting conclusion from the article seems to be that Google is confident that Nexus One would be able to compete one on one with the iPhone on features and usability, hence they offered no major discounts to get the customers.
- jrockway 17y ago
  T-Mobile is significantly cheaper than AT&T, however. With the lowest number of minutes and unlimited data, I was paying $110 on AT&T (including taxes). On T-Mobile, this is about $70 with taxes. That is almost $500/year cheaper!
  - awa 17y ago
    how? Afaik $40 is the minimum voice plan add $30 for iphone plan. Total $70... Add about 10% in taxes and say another 10% in fees. Total=$85. However, you can easily get a 15% discount by having .edu email address or most companies get the same discount which usually offset the various fees and taxes.
RK 17y ago
I currently have $6/month 3G internet from T-mobile (continued service from a couple years ago), so I will definitely be buying this at $530.
shalmanese 17y ago
Hrmm... unless T-mobile has a different ETF for the nexus one, it would seem smarter to buy it subsidized and eat the $200 ETF. It's a compelling value proposition as a VOIP/Google Voice phone. T-Mobile has an unlimited data plan for $40, add in unlimited text messaging for $10. The TCO for a 24 month nexus one on this is $1580. As opposed to the $2360 for an iPhone. That $800 difference could be the tipping point for a lot of people.

29 points by transburgh 17y ago

ugh 17y ago

Short: Just another phone.

pmcginn 17y ago
Yeah, if these docs are true, I'm sticking with Verizon and my BlackBerry; not that I have any special love for either one of them. $80/mo? That's what I pay Verizon. $180 for a subsidized, non-Apple smartphone? Keep your ten percent. There goes my post-christmas geek present to myself. Without the massive cost savings that had been rumored, I have zero incentive to pay out of my Verizon contract.
- pyre 17y ago
  > $180 for a subsidized, non-Apple smartphone? If the 'non-Apple' part is an issue then why aren't you buying an iPhone?

cwan 17y ago

Not in the US so I don't really know how the plans are like but this seems expensive: "- If you want it subsidized, you’ll have to sign up for a 2 year mandatory contract - There’s only one rate plan: $39.99 Even More + Text + Web for $79.99 total". It would seem that if you want the phone that badly it would be cheaper just to cough up the $530. Incidentally, given that we sort of know what the pricing is (I suppose they could be aggressive about dropping the price later), what's the strategy here for Google? Just worried about cannibalizing sales of other firms that use Android? Why even bother putting out their own phone or being so involved with Motorola in the development of the iDroid?

Andys 17y ago
Exactly what I did to get my G1 here in Australia. Bought it outright for around $600 and then went on a $5/month plan with calls and data that are cheap enough ($15/GB). As far as I can see, buying outright always works out cheaper than a hefty plan with all the trimmings included
buster 17y ago
That's around the same price you pay for phone + unlimited dataplan in germany (atleast for iphone and G1).

zenlinux 17y ago

Drat. If the earlier rumors I had heard were true (unlocked phone for $199), I was thinking they were committing to a smart strategy to decimate Nokia and their N900 phone. Guess that's not the case.

houseabsolute 17y ago
It would be nice if you spent some time explaining why you believe selling at $199 would be "smart". Google already gives too many things away for free. Selling a phone that might be able to compete with the iPhone at $199 almost certainly means selling at a loss. To what end? I can't imagine that search queries can make up for the remaining $100 or $200 that it costs to manufacture the phone. Unless you believe "decimating Nokia" is an end itself, I'm curious why you think it would be a smart move.
- zenlinux 17y ago
  Google has a lot more at stake than just profits from this particular phone. They are interested in establishing the Android platform as a major player on smart phone devices, and are coming into the game with a pretty weak position given Apple's current dominance. To be able to make headway into the market they need every advantage they can get, and neutralizing Nokia's N900 offering would help prevent another player from complicating the market for them. Not to mention at that price they'd be dealing Apple a major blow. I figure they have the cash, why not use it for something like this. I admit this is all idle speculation on my part, and that Google may or may not have a lot at stake in the success of Andriod.
- pmcginn 17y ago
  The $199 was never the attraction for me, and seemed unlikely. $300? Ehh... Maybe. I always figured it'd land in the $500 range, and this isn't too far off. The real carrot for me was the idea of a prepaid $29/mo data only plan, which I actually thought was believable. T-Mobile already offers pretty much the exact same plan ($1/day) for prepaid Sidekick users (voice is 0.15/min.) I barely use voice (~100 minutes/mo), and if I could drop my unlimited text/internet/450 voice plan for something that was only $29, I could definitely learn to live with the quirks of VOIP on a mobile handset and the loss of MMS. Honestly, even if you threw me in a contract to get the phone at $199, as long as data was that cheap I'd gladly sign up for two years the same minute I was sending Verizon their $350 good-bye letter. I don't use my phone as a phone and am sick of having to pay so much for minutes I just don't use. The cost of my voice plan before data and text is around $40/mo, which works out to me paying .40/minute for what I use. Even if I used real voice instead of Google Voice I'd be saving money.

grandalf 17y ago

I was excited about the rumored $99 pricing. This is a huge disappointment.

timdorr 17y ago
You were disappointed by a lie?
- grandalf 17y ago
  All of the other rumors about google products/services have turned out to be true, so I felt a bit more inclined to believe this one than I typically would. Also, I would really respect Google for using some of its billions of dollars to subsidize the phone to the $99 price point and take tons of market share (thus creating a huge incentive for app developers). Sadly Google seems content to release just another phone.
  - plinkplonk 17y ago
    "using some of its billions of dollars to subsidize the phone to the $99 price point" easy to suggest when it is not your billions of dollars being thrown away ;-) "This device, sold at or near cost, " (as jsz0 suggests) is a more reasonable strategy, since (a) Google's main revenue streams are not affected (probably enhanced) and (b) Apple and Nokia can't compete without reducing their profit. That said, I think Google is a sufficiently big company now to have mediocre middle managers who'd scuttle such "radical" ideas.
    - grandalf 17y ago
      True, those are accurate points. I was just hoping for a really bold move. This does not seem to be all that bold (unless the $199 pricing is for people w/o "old" google accounts which might still leave room for the rumor to be true).
- randallsquared 17y ago
  Disappointed by it being a lie. This is why rumors can be a bad thing for upcoming products: overhyping leads to disappointment with what otherwise might have seemed a solid offering.

swolchok 17y ago

Why are phones so bloody expensive? The iPod Touch can be had for $200ish, so why does adding the "phone part" double the cost? (full disclosure: I'm on the iPod Touch curmudgeon phone plan -- I pay Skype $3/mo for outgoing calls and insist that incoming callers leave voicemail, which is emailed to me through Google Voice.)

mattmaroon 17y ago
Well there's the phone part. The GPS. The camera. It costs $99 subsidized, and if I'm not mistaken you can get out of a contract for $200, so that's $300 right?
rdouble 17y ago
http://www.isuppli.com/News/Pages/iPhone-3G-S-Carries-178-96-BOM-and-Manufacturing-Cost-iSuppli-Teardown-Reveals.aspx http://www.isuppli.com/News/Pages/iPhone-3G-S-Carries-178-96...
- g_lined 17y ago
  There are enough questions about where their numbers come from that it would be advised to think before using them as any more than a guide to some costs involved. http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/04/13/isuppli-shuffle http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/04/13/isuppli-shuffle http://daringfireball.net/2007/07/isuppli http://daringfireball.net/2007/07/isuppli
timdorr 17y ago
It's not the "phone part", it's the size. They're packing a phone, various hardware components, a CPU, storage, a bright screen, and a battery to power the whole thing into a tiny package. I'm surprised it's only $529 unsubsidized.
nostrademons 17y ago
My phone's got more processing power and more memory than the laptop I bought 5 years ago. It also has a GPS, camera, accelerometer, voice recognition, and cellular connection. And it fits in my pocket. The laptop cost $1600 when I bought it. Why are we complaining about a $500ish phone?

ars 17y ago

Looks like kw_ has to pay up on his bet with michaelkeenan http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=997078 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=997078

jrockway 17y ago
Before anyone makes any donations, someone should probably wait for this information to be confirmed by Google or T-Mobile. You know, the people actually selling the product, not some random blog...

jsz0 17y ago

Google is missing an opportunity here. This device, sold at or near cost, could have been an iPod Touch competitor. That would have been a huge boost to the Android Market. It seems the iPod Touch is outselling the iPhone these days by a pretty good clip -- at least according to holiday App Store downloads: http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/12/28/flurry-app-store-sees-record-breaking-christmas-50-growth-from-november-to-december/ http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/12/28/flurry-app-store-sees...

jrockway 17y ago
The Android iPod Touch equivalent is the Archos 5 Internet Tablet. It is much better than the iPod in nearly every way, unless you absolutely must have App Store apps. (It plays 720p MKVs, for example. This is good if you obtain your video files not-from-iTunes.) Archos released it way before the software was ready, but with the latest firmware updates, it's excellent.
iigs 17y ago
Google undercutting their hardware partners would be suicide for future phone wins. Moreover, since Google doesn't do their own hardware, this would surely be the last time HTC partnered with them and they'd be up a creek for future hardware designs. Google only cares about things with a data connection, and I firmly believe that WiFi only devices are a small enough market that they're just a distraction for the big names right now -- except Apple, since the iPod touch kind of bridged an established product with the at-the-time new phone platform.

ars 17y ago

If I buy the unlocked phone can I use it with AT&t (or any other GSM carrier)?

freetard 17y ago
Yes you can.
bretpiatt 17y ago
It looks like though if you want to use it on AT&T you'll be on EDGE until it is jailbroken. It has the proper frequency 3G chip in it but in the early testing it only connects to the 2.5G EDGE network so something with the AT&T 3G is disabled on it. I'll be swapping from my BlackBerry Bold as soon as this gets fixed. Maybe I'm crazy for not wanting an iPhone since I'm already on AT&T and want to stay with them as a carrier but this looks like the first device I'm willing to switch to instead of a BlackBerry after making the swap a few years back from an Nokia N61.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
nicpottier 17y ago
Will it work for voice? Definitely. Will it work for data, kinda. The nexus is on the 3G band that T-Mo uses (as does most of the rest of the world I believe) but not the one AT&T uses, so you'll be stuck on Edge (which sucks) if you want to use it on AT&T. PS. This isn't a software issue as the commenter above says, well it is, but it isn't software anybody is going to be changing anytime soon. (radio firmware)

dannyr 17y ago

I'm going to hold off making judgement until Google's announcement on January 5. I think they have something up in their sleeves. My guess is its mostly software-related though - new Android features or cloud/mobile services.

jrockway 17y ago
What cloud features does Google not provide? Add a contact in Google Voice, watch it show up on your phone. Change the color of a calendar on Google Calendar, watch the color change on the calendar widget. Etc., etc.
- dannyr 17y ago
  Full backup of your data and files (e.g. photos, music, videos). Easy access to your Google Docs. I believe there are apps on the market that does this but Google might integrate in the core of Android. Native Google Task App.

derwiki 17y ago

This is all wishful thinking.. but if anyone at Google is listening, how about discounts for us G1 users? We knew the G1 wasn't as good as an iPhone, but we bought it anyway, because we wanted to do our part in helping the Android OS succeed. Now it's one year later, Droids have come out, and I still get a "kill task" dialog every time I start a browser on the G1 (because it's slow).

awa 17y ago

Sigh.. I was all excited about it and was thinking of dumping my iPhone, since it seemed I would atleast save some money in the long run. Unfortunately, it would cost me the same and T-mobile service isn't much better than AT&T (imho) The only interesting conclusion from the article seems to be that Google is confident that Nexus One would be able to compete one on one with the iPhone on features and usability, hence they offered no major discounts to get the customers.

jrockway 17y ago
T-Mobile is significantly cheaper than AT&T, however. With the lowest number of minutes and unlimited data, I was paying $110 on AT&T (including taxes). On T-Mobile, this is about $70 with taxes. That is almost $500/year cheaper!
- awa 17y ago
  how? Afaik $40 is the minimum voice plan add $30 for iphone plan. Total $70... Add about 10% in taxes and say another 10% in fees. Total=$85. However, you can easily get a 15% discount by having .edu email address or most companies get the same discount which usually offset the various fees and taxes.

RK 17y ago

I currently have $6/month 3G internet from T-mobile (continued service from a couple years ago), so I will definitely be buying this at $530.

shalmanese 17y ago

Hrmm... unless T-mobile has a different ETF for the nexus one, it would seem smarter to buy it subsidized and eat the $200 ETF. It's a compelling value proposition as a VOIP/Google Voice phone. T-Mobile has an unlimited data plan for $40, add in unlimited text messaging for $10. The TCO for a 24 month nexus one on this is $1580. As opposed to the $2360 for an iPhone. That $800 difference could be the tipping point for a lot of people.