T-Mobile's parent company, Deutsche Telekom, confirms the HTC Dream as the smartphone "got official" through FCC today. What should we expect to see this fall?
Deutsche Telekom today confirmed that T-Mobile will be the first carrier to offer a smartphone based on Google Android OS. HTC has manufactured the smartphone -- currently known as the HTC Dream -- based on a Qualcomm chipset.
Rumored to offer a capacitive touchscreen interface, slide-out QWERTY thumbboard, 3G and Wi-Fi, the HTC Dream passed through FCC today. T-Mobile customers in the U.S. as well as in Germany are likely to be among the first ones to get a taste of the HTC Dream. By choosing T-Mobile first, the Google Android OS can also rapidly spread to other major European markets.
Google Android OS and the Open Handset Alliance were officially announced on 4th November of 2007, and the "leaks" from the partners involved suggests a full launch of the HTC Dream on or around the one-year anniversary of the alliance. T-Mobile usually announce their phones on the day of release, but this time around they may possibly do like Apple; announce their hottest stuff a month or two up front. It would certainly be interesting to check out a pre-release model when we attend CTIA Fall in September, at least.
So what should we expect from the HTC Dream? A lot, when taking the hardware partners into account. HTC, Qualcomm and T-Mobile have been working together for a long time on Windows Mobile smartphones. T-Mobile and HTC is also known for their user-friendly tweaks to Microsoft's offering.
However, when it comes to software and services there are a lot of unanswered questions. Google played the desktop-like card from day one, but at the same time passed the ball on to the open source community. Still, we expect that Google has ported the Webkit engine to Android OS, the same engine that renders pages in the Apple iPhone. How Google chooses to control its web browser is unknown though. Nokia uses the Webkit engine too, but obviously control the web browser differently, so we'll just have to wait and see. Opera is currently also porting its Opera Mini to Android, though we hope to see a full Opera Mobile browser for Android some day.
With regards to multimedia services, we're not sure what to expect from the HTC Dream. Google Android will likely offer a pretty capable media player, but T-Mobile can't be accused of having the best mobile services around. In Germany, T-Mobile offers a music download service as part of its t-zones package: Mobile Jukebox - Music that stays with you. A catchy name and slogan for sure, but the service itself is fairly average, and relies on Windows Media Player 10 for PC synchronization.
We don't expect to see messaging services from Microsoft and Research In Motion being offered by the HTC Dream though. Ironically, amongst all the touch interfaces and multimedia features, the heaviest battle right now is in messaging services. Corporate customers pay their bills, obviously. In addition, how crazy wouldn't it be to see HTC and Qualcomm cranking out Microsoft services on Linux based smartphones?
Now that Apple has released its App Store with a great revenue sharing program, we should of course also expect Google to follow up with a great ad revenue sharing program and a App Store of their own. Google has proved to be a good partner for desktop application developers, so many of them will for sure jump on the new opportunities that are coming.
For T-Mobile customers in the U.S., the biggest concern about the HTC Dream may actually be data speeds. T-Mobile promises to have rolled out 3G service in more than 20 markets by the end of 2008, but it could take years for the carrier to be considered a reliable 3G network provider nationwide. For all users, another concern will be how invasive the mobile ads will be. That said, we would choose an advertisement over phone limitations any day, if that's what it takes.
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