Today at this morning’s major Chrome event, Google has just announced that Chrome OS… isn’t done. It still has work to do with camera drivers (for notebook USB ports), finishing Google Cloud Print, and more. But it wants to get the notebook into early adopters’ hands, so it’s announcing a new Pilot Program. Google will be distributing a notebook called Cr-48. These are not for sale, they are designed as a test unit.
Consumers will be able to apply for this, however, but Google isn’t giving it away to just anyone. On its Facebook Fan Page, they ran a promotion a couple days, announcing a sticker for a Chrome laptop, if you did that quiz, you get a notebook. If you go toyoutube.com/googlechrome and make a video showing why you’re an ideal candidate for this, you’ll have a chance to snag a notebook. And everyone in the audience at today’s event is getting one (everyone claps). And if you don’t fall into any of those buckets, you can go tothis page to apply.
The CR-48 is supposed to boot in 10 seconds, includes a webcam, and 12-inch LCD display. It is 3.8 pounds with 8 hours of battery life and an entire week of standby time, according to Google’s marketing materials. Eventually, manufacturing partners will make Chromebooks you can actually buy in stores.
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For the last few days we’ve been using the Google Nexus S, manufactured by Samsung, with the new Android 2.3 “Gingerbread” operating system. This is a phone that was designed with direct input from the Google Android team. And like its predecessor, the Nexus One, which was released in January 2010, it has a “clean” install of Android. That means there is no additional software layer from third party OEMs or carriers to interfere with the user experience. Like the Nexus One, this will become the reference phone for this generation of Android.
Unlike the Nexus One, the phone was not built from scratch – the starting point was the Samsung Galaxy S, released earlier this year. And Google will not be selling this phone directly to consumers. They say that experiment is over, and this phone will be available initially at Best Buy in the U.S. (on T-Mobile) and Carphone Warehouse in the U.K. Google says the phone is currently expected to be available starting December 16, although pre-orders might be taken earlier.
The phone does not fail to please. It is significantly faster than the Nexus One (and most current generation phones), has a high-end AMOLED 400 x 800 resolution screen that is second only to the iPhone 4, and is NFC-enabled. Like all Android phones it is dead simple to set up, assuming you use Gmail, Google Calendar, Google contacts, etc. But it’s Google’s various apps, some of which are unavailable for the iPhone, that make it the best phone on the market today.
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Google shows early Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) tablet
Andy Rubin showed off an unreleased Motorola tablet running Android 3.0 at the All Things D Conference in San Francisco.
In the last 24 hours, we’ve had a flurry of Android smartphone news. Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) details have been released; Google announced the Nexus S phone; the Google eBookstore has launched; and we learned that a new version of Google Maps with 3D buildings is coming out. Well, here’s one more. Video of Android chief Andy Rubin’s Google Maps demonstration at the All Things D Conference has hit the web, and brought some extra details. Rubin showed off the new Maps features on an unannounced upcoming tablet from Motorola running an early version of Android 3.0 (Honeycomb), a 2011 version of Android that will officially support tablets.
The hosts you’ll see in the video below are Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher of D: All Things Digital. CNET does a good job summarizing the majority of the rest of Rubin’s interview where he is grilled on the failure of the Nexus One and the fragmentation between Android experiences on different handset manufacturers, and how much control carriers have over Android.
During the interview, Rubin shows off the new Google Maps and some other new features of Android 3.0. The biggest change is that the tablet doesn’t have a single button on the front of it–even the iPad has one button. Rubin explains this by showing how the device can be picked up and used from any orientation, meaning that it has no real bottom or top. (However, he doesn’t mention that the front-facing camera is only in one place.) He also shows off a tablet version of Gmail and some new desktop widgets. The device’s homescreen looks almost Windows-like in some ways.
TechCrunch estimates that the Motorola tablet shown is about 9 inches, larger than the Samsung Galaxy Tab, but slightly smaller than an iPad. It has no price point or release date, but Rubin does comment on the price of the pre-production unit he’s holding: about $10,000.
