Coming Soon: Nexus One on Sprint
By Harry McCracken | Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 12:58 pm
Sprint has announced that Google will sell a Sprint version of the Nexus One “superphone,” with details to come soon:
“Nexus One is a powerful device that belongs on a powerful network. This is another step in our continued partnership of innovation with Google,” said Fared Adib, Sprint vice president of product development. “Sprint customers already have the option of two amazing Android devices with Samsung Moment(TM) and HTC Hero(TM). It is a natural fit for us to add Nexus One to the list of choices available for Sprint customers who want the best value in wireless with the best in Android.”
It’s a tad odd that Sprint is spreading the news before it’s ready to talk pricing, but maybe it wanted to give a heads-up to its customers who craved a Nexus One before they jump to another carrier. And while the Moment and Hero may be nice phones, the Nexus One will easily be the sexiest Android device available for Sprint; for the moment, at least, Sprint is letting Google sell a Sprint phone that trumps the ones available in its own stores.
With the T-Mobile Nexus One, the new AT&T-compatible one, and Verizon and Sprint ones on the way, folks who want a Nexus One will be able to get ones that work on every major U.S. carrier. (AT&T customers will have to pay $529, since there’s no subsidized version; I’m assuming that Verizon and Sprint customers will be able to get one cheap with a two-year contract, although I don’t think that’s official.)
For all the controversy over Google competing directly with its own partners, it’s doing a good job of getting the Nexus One onto all the big U.S. networks. Given that the phone doesn’t appear to be a blockbuster yet, maybe the rest of the industry has concluded that it doesn’t need to fear the Googlephone after all…
2 Comments
Read more:
2 Comments For This Post
March 17th, 2010 at 2:09 pm
Not ready to talk about pricing? It’s going to be $529, unsubsidized. That’s the price. Now, whether Sprint want’s to talk about subsidies, that is another matter.
March 17th, 2010 at 10:04 pm
Google is really asking a lot of each Nexus One purchaser: the unusual hardware/software split production model, the unusual non-carrier non-manufacturer retail sales model, the unusual email-only wait-3-days support model, the unusual inactivated carrier model, the name which was just found to infringe on a competitor’s trademark and so will likely change any time now, and the patent infringement suit against the tiny manufacturer with no product designers by the 3rd largest company in the US, so that Nexus One could be withdrawn from the market or have features disabled via software update at any time now. Plus it’s had technical problems with the 3G radio, has less than 1GB of app storage, and malware (09Droid) was recently served from Android Market and other malwares are in the wild. That is an awful lot to ask of users who can buy a number of smartphones for $99 (including iPhone) from stores right in their neighborhoods and get in-person support there also.
Also, I don’t get what the point of buying a proprietary Verizon or Sprint phone from a 3rd party is? A Verizon phone will always run on Verizon or it will be a paperweight, those are your only 2 options. Same for Sprint. You can’t buy one from Google and then choose a carrier, you can only go to the carrier who already owns that phone and sign up. So why not just get the phone from them when you sign up? Is it just to keep the carriers from putting on crapware? Can’t think of any other reason. With a GSM phone it makes some sense because you can run on hundreds of carriers, but even then, this is US-only, right? There’s only 1 GSM carrier in the US so even GSM seems like proprietary in the US if you don’t travel. So no choice in carriers from this carrier choice model. I don’t even see where you get the perception of choice. From the user perspective, it seems like a way to avoid the awful, awful subsidy which everybody loves. But you could already buy phones unsubsidized from the carriers, you can opt-out of the subsidy and pay full price for the phone.
Whatever Google is thinking, it is a mystery to me. Are they doing this badly deliberately so they can have an excuse to get out of Android and do a Chrome Phone? Or is their tiny mobile division really that incompetent?