My iPhone Envy and the coming New World Order of Mobile Devices

Posted by Luke Gilman

September 21, 2008

I’ve contracted a nasty case of iPhone envy lately, inspired mostly by the 3G powered lightning fast web browsing, iPod functionality and the army of application developers churning out cool new stuff for the App Store. Apple solved most of what kept me tethered to my Crackberry by adding real GPS functionality and ability to play nice with Exchange Server e-mail used by most large companies. Giving me pause is the hefty hidden pricing and subpar service that come with being stuck with ATT as the sole service provider and my lingering suspicions about a button-less interface. While I had assumed that I would slowly succumb to becoming ‘one of those people’ I’m now faced with more of a conundrum.

TechCrunch has posted pics of the HTC Dream G1 handset in the wild (see above). HTC Dream G1, aka the gPhone, runs Google’s highly anticipated new Android cellphone software designed to compete with Apple’s iPhone. Google has scheduled the official announcement for this tuesday with retail availability scheduled for October. Analysts expect a $200 subsidized price with a 2-year contract from T-Mobile, which I already use as the the cheapest unmetered data plan available at the time. Choices, choices….

Equally interesting in an anthropological platform-as-social-signal-of-my-worldviews kind of way is that this promises to transcend the usual I’m a PC/I’m a Mac paradigm where it’s cheaper vs. better. This is Google, whose history of game-changing products, vaunted engineering prowess and relentless pursuit of novel solutions to consumer needs, promises if nothing else to send the development of handheld devices into competitive overdrive.

See the video below for a demonstration of Google’s Android software at their Developers’ Day in London.