Is There Android In My Future?
So, Cellular South announced yesterday that it would be offering an unspecific Android handset by the end of the year, which didn’t surprise me since they’ve been running a “design an Android app” contest for the past few weeks. (Full disclosure: Cellular South recently became an advertiser with the JFP, so I follow them even more closely than I did a few weeks ago when they were just our main mobile carrier. Mostly, though, I like shiny things.)
Since I find my Blackberry dull and lifeless — which is true of pretty much any mobile phone I carry for more than six months — I’m stoked about this. I’ve been surfing on and off for days looking for clues as to which handset we (er…they) might be getting. (Whether or not “we” get one or not is gonna be up to upgrade pricing.)
My first inclination was to believe that the LG Spyder2 840 that Cellular South also recently pre-announced might be that Android handset, although I based that belief on (a.) the coincidence of its timing with the Android App contest, (b.) its similarity in appearance to the T-Mobile G1 and (c.) the use of the term “GSensor” in the features description, noting that the GSensor will offer an “excellent game and Web experience” and that sounds faintly, well, like the “Google” version of the accelerometer in the iPhone and others.
My subsequent surfing has not borne this theory out — it seems that no other mobile watchers I’ve found have tried to make that connection and there’s the suggestion that the LG 840 is an update of the LG 830, which was pulled somewhat early by carriers after lackluster reviews.
Also, GSensor seems to be a common name for an accelerometer, which makes so much sense that I probably should go ahead and edit that last paragraph and not tell anyone I thought it had something to do with the Google. I’d now revise my guess and assert that the “g” has something to do with “gravity.” Duh.
Oh, and the artwork shown on the screen of the LG 840 on the CS site doesn’t look a darned thing like Android. So there’s that, too.
Now, it’s too bad if the LG 840 isn’t an Android phone, because I really want the Cellular South Android phone to have (a.) a cheap upgrade path and (b.) a physical QWERTY keyboard. I know for some discerning users the mere suggestion of a slider keyboard conjures images of thumb wrestling while holding a brick, but I’ve been partial to the Sidekick-style communicator phone for quite some time, and I frankly think I could get along fine with the G1 if one appeared in my life. I like really useful keyboards on phones — and I’d like to see my next smartphone offer a keyboarding experience that is superior to the iPhone. (In fact, I want everything about it to be better than the iPhone so I don’t have to keep thinking about going back to the iPhone.)
Bets are on that the CS phone will be an HTC Magic like the upcoming T-Mobile MyTouch — the phone that’s often called the G2. While it’s unlikely to be the much lauded HTC Hero there’s a chance it could offer that handset or something similarly high-end. There are also rumors of some lower-end Android handsets coming to market, which might be a place for CS to start if they see the Android phone as more play-oriented than work-minded.
In any case, CS already has the relationship with HTC, featuring the company’s Windows Mobile HTC Touch Diamond product. And, HTC has publicly said that it plans to aggressively pursue both CDMA (like CS and T-Mobile) and GSM handsets for many different carriers, so an Android phone manufactured by HTC might be just the right product to launch in time for the 2009 holiday season.
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